The Weekly Rocket Report #49
10/20/2025-10/26/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Welcome back my friends, to The Weekly Rocket Report! Let’s get straight into the action where we start, as we often do, with Starlink:
The 28 satellites of Starlink Group 11-21 blasted off aboard Falcon 9 Monday evening from Cape Canaveral. Following stage separation, the booster returned to Earth, landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Next up was a launch of Falcon 9 Wednesday afternoon carrying Starlink Group 10-37. The launch successfully placed another 29 satellites into orbit and the first stage returned, landing down range on the drone ship “Just Read The Instructions”.
Falcon 9 launches Starlink Group 10-37. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
Friday morning we got to watch a crew launch, this time from China. Long March 2F/G blasted off from Jiuquan Launch Center carrying the crew of Shenzhou 21 to the Tiangong Space Station. The crew consisted of Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang.
Long March 2 launches Shenzhou 21. Photo Credit: CNSA.
Later Friday afternoon Falcon 9 returned, launching Starlink Group 11-23 from Vandenberg. The 28 Starlink satellites were placed into orbit and the rocket’s first stage flew back to its drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Sunday was quite a busy day with 3 launches from 3 different countries, and it all kicked off in the early morning with Falcon 9 launching Bandwagon 4 from the Cape. Bandwagon is similar to SpaceX’s Transporter missions, except the Bandwagon missions are designed to take payloads to mid inclination orbits. Bandwagon 4 carried 18 payloads. The first stage was recovered, after staging it flew back down to the launch site, landing at LZ-2.
Next on the day was India, launching LVM-3, the first mission of 2025 for India’s heavy lift rocket. The payload was CMS-03, a naval communications satellite for the Indian Military.
LVM-3 launches CMS-03. Photo Credit: ISRO.
The final launch for the week blasted off from China, where a Long March 7A carried Yaogan 46 to office. Yaogan 46 is a classified Earth observation satellite, reportedly designed to study hydrology and meteorology.
That wraps it up for the week everyone. Next week looks to be very busy, with all kinds of rockets to watch, I see Electron, Falcon, Ariane 6, New Glen, Kinetica, and Atlas all on the docket for the same week. Can’t wait to watch, and can’t wait to break it all down next week on The Weekly Rocket Report!
As always feel free to write to me at rickyew2112@gmail.com, or find me on X @Rickyew2112
Sic Itur Ad Astra
(Thus They Journey to the Stars)