We have quite an exciting week coming up in rocket launches. On Wednesday, we get the 8th test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, and on Thursday, a Falcon 9 will take a Moon mission to space to begin its journey. There is also a crewed mission from Blue Origin.
Monday, 24 February
- Who: SpaceX
- What: Falcon 9
- When: 04:42 UTC
- Where: Florida, US
- Why: SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 carrying 21 Starlink satellites to a low Earth orbit. Among this batch will be 13 direct-to-cell satellites that can communicate directly with supported devices. This batch of satellites has the designation Starlink Group 12-13.
Tuesday, 25 February
- Who: Blue Origin
- What: New Shepard
- When: 15:30 UTC
- Where: Texas, US
- Why: Blue Origin will launch New Shepard, which will carry a crew of six to the edge of space. The crew includes Lane Bess, Jesús Calleja, Elaine Chia Hyde, Dr. Richard Scott, Tushar Shah, and an undisclosed sixth crew member. The crew will experience several minutes of near weightlessness.
Wednesday, 26 February
- Who: SpaceX
- What: Starship
- When: 23:30 UTC
- Where: Texas, US
- Why: SpaceX will launch Starship on Integrated Flight Test 8 (IFT-8) on Wednesday. The Super Heavy booster will try to land at the launch tower, and Starship will attempt to deploy 10 Starlink simulator payloads in orbit.
Thursday, 27 February
- Who: SpaceX
- What: Falcon 9
- When: 00:02 UTC
- Where: Florida, US
- Why: SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to launch Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, called Athena, to the Moon, where it will land on the Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the lunar south pole. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer, Epic Aerospace's orbital tug CHIMERA-GEO and AstroForge’s Odin mission will fly as secondary payloads. The Odin mission will head to asteroid 2022 OB5, a small near-Earth asteroid that could be metallic.
- Who: Roscosmos
- What: Soyuz 2.1a
- When: 21:24 UTC
- Where: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
- Why: The Soyuz rocket will launch the 91st Progress cargo delivery ship to the International Space Station (ISS) so that astronauts have everything they need to continue operating in space.
Friday, 28 February
- Who: SpaceX
- What: Falcon 9
- When: 02:52 UTC
- Where: Florida, US
- Why: SpaceX will launch 21 Starlink satellites to a low Earth orbit. This mission also includes 13 direct-to-cell satellites, and the batch as a whole is Starlink Group 12-20. After the launch, the Falcon 9 will attempt a landing for reuse.
- Who: SpaceX
- What: Falcon 9
- When: 03:09 UTC
- Where: California, US
- Why: In this mission, SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 carrying the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions. The SPHEREx satellite will snap images of the universe in infrared light. It will help astronomers understand more and allow for the study of light coming from more than 450 million galaxies. The PUNCH satellite will consist of four small satellites that will work together to study the sun’s corona. The satellites will also snap images of solar wind leaving the sun to help scientists learn more about space weather.
Recap
- The first launch we got last week was a Rocket Lab Electron rocket carrying the first BlackSky Gen 3 satellite. The mission introduced BlackSky’s newest 35cm high-resolution Gen-3 satellites to orbit, allowing them to greatly enhance and optimize their geospatial intelligence capabilities.
- Next up, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink Group 10-12, which included 23 Starlink satellites. The first stage of the rocket performed a landing so that it could be reused.
- The final mission we got, at the time of writing, was another Starlink mission from SpaceX. This time, it was Starlink Group 12-14. The first stage of this rocket also performed a landing.
That’s all for this week; check in next time!
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