The Weekly Rocket Report #57
12/22/2025-12/28/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello my friends and welcome back to the greatest publication on Earth, The Weekly Rocket Report! I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season, and is ready for the year 2026 to begin. Before we get there, we have a few more launches to go over:
We ended last week with a rocket failure, and we interestingly, begin this week with a couple of rocket failures. The first of these took place Monday with the first test launch of Hanbit-Nano. The small rocket, built by a South Korean company called Innospace, lost control shortly after its launch from the Alcantara launch center in Brazil, and came crashing back to the ground.
Hanbit-Nano prior to the launch of its Demo Flight. Photo Credit: Innospace.
Monday evening saw another Demo Flight, this time of the Chinese Long March 12 rocket. Long March 12 is CASC’s first attempt at a re-useable first stage rocket. The launch itself was a success, with its second stage, and dummy payload reaching proper orbit. However the landing was not successful, as the entry/landing burn appeared to damage the rocket and the rocket’s booster crashed to the ground.
Getting back on track Tuesday we had a successful launch from ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization. LVM-3 took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center carrying BlueBird Block 2 FM1, a high bandwith cellular data satellite.
LVM-3 launches BlueBird Block 2 FM1. Photo Credit: ISRO.
Russia jumped into the game this week, beginning with a launch Thursday morning from Soyuz 2.1a. The rocket was carrying Obzor-R, a X-band radar satellite to orbit. Of note, unless I am corrected, this Soyuz launch, was the first launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, since mid 2019.
Later in the day Thursday Long March 8A took to the skies carrying SatNet LEO Group 17. This mission added 9 more satellites to the SatNet constellation.
Long March 8A launches SatNet LEO Group 17. Photo Credit: https://x.com/CNSpaceflight.
Friday saw the launch of Long March 3B/E from the Xichang Launch Center. This time Long March was carrying Fengyun-4C, a Chinese weather satellite.
The final launch of the week also came from Russia, and Soyuz 2.1b. The rocket was hauling AIST-2T 1 & 2, a pair of Earth observation satellites, as well as rideshare mission containing 50 small satellite payloads. Of note, this launch took place from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, only the second launch from there this year.
That’s a wrap on the launches for the week everyone. On behalf of everyone here at TWS I would like to wish you all a wonderful start to 2026. I will be starting work on a Yearly Rocket Report once again sometime in January so look forward to that. We have a few more launches left in 2025, and a whole lot to look forward to in 2026. So as the old joke goes, I’ll see you all next year!
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)