The Weekly Rocket Report #56
12/15/2025-12/21/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello my friends and welcome back, to The Weekly Rocket Report! We may be winding down to the end of the year, but the launch industry is certainly not slowing down, and we have plenty of excitement to carry us on our journey towards 2026. Let’s review the week shall we?
We start out the week with a Starlink launch, as we often do. Falcon 9 carried the 29 satellites of Starlink 6-82 to orbit early Monday morning. Following the separation of stages the first stage returned to Earth, landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall Of Gravitas”.
Monday evening saw Long March 4B getting off the ground, carrying Ziyuan-3 04. This payload is the 4th in a series of civilian use, high-res mapping satellites.
Now let’s do some solid rocket boosters shall we? Atlas V roared to the sky in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning carrying another set of Amazon’s internet satellites. The constellation, now called Amazon LEO (previously Project Kuiper) had 27 satellites added by this mission, called LA-04 (LEO Atlas 4).
Atlas V launches LA-04. Image Credit: ULA.
Since we’re on the topic of SRBs lets talk about Ariane 6. An Ariane 6 blasted off from Guiana Space Centre just after midnight on Wednesday carrying Galileo FOC FM33 & FM34. This payload pair ads to the group of Galileo global navigation satellites in orbit.
Ariane 6 launches Galileo FOC FM33 & FM34. Image Credit: ESA.
Back to Falcon 9, Starlink Group 6-99 got off the ground Wednesday morning, adding 29 satellites to the ever-expanding constellation. Following booster jettison it returned to Earth, landing down range on the drone ship “Just Read The Instructions”.
Less than 2 hours later another Starlink mission took to the skies, this time from Vandenberg. The 27 satellites of Starlink Group 15-13 rode Falcon 9 to orbit, and the rocket’s booster flew back to Earth and landed on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Now we get to Electron, which launched from the Wallops Island Facility just after midnight Thursday. The mission called “Don’t Be Such a Square” delivered STP-S30, a DOD research and tech demo mission to orbit. In total there were 4 payloads aboard.
Electron prior to the launch of “Don’t Be Such A Square”. Image Credit: Rocket Lab.
Moving to the early morning hours of Saturday a Long March 5 took off from the Wenchang Space Center in China. Long March 5 was carrying TJSW-23 a Chinese “communication satellite”.
Later Saturday morning we got to see a human spaceflight! New Shepard took off from the West Texas Desert on the mission NS-37, New Shepard’s 16th human flight. The crew consisted of Joey Hyde, Michi Benthaus, Hans Koenigsmann, Neal Milch, Jason Stansell, and Adonis Pouroulis. The crew was brought just above the Karman Line and both booster and crew capsule returned to Earth safely to land in the desert.
New Shepard Booster landing in the West Texas Desert. Image Credit: Blue Origin.
Back to Electron, this time from the Mahia Peninsula Sunday morning. This mission, called “The Wisdom God Guides” marks the 21st launch of Electron this year, a stark improvement from 2024. The payload for this mission was QPS-SAR-15 the latest Electron launch for IQPS and their collection of SAR satellites.
The final launch ended the week on kind of a sour note. It seems like its not often that we get rocket failures anymore, but we did have one Sunday night. H3-22S took off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan carrying Michibiki 5, a Japanese satellite navigation system. After a successful liftoff and ascent, the second stage engine cut off prematurely, causing the payload to be stranded in lower than intended orbit.
That is all for the week everyone. It’s always surreal this time of year for me, how is it almost 2026 already? Some interesting launches coming still in December, Soyuz, Falcon, LVM, and demo flights for all kinds of Chinese rockets like Ceres 2, Kinetica 2, and Tianlong 3 (though these may be delayed into 2026). Whatever does happen you can count on me to be back here breaking it all down, 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)