SpaceX will dominate the launch schedule this week. We have two Falcon 9 launches and an Ariane 5 ECA+ launch. We will see Starlink satellites get orbited, the Transporter-8 rideshare mission, and a French military satellite launched.
Monday, June 12
The first launch of the week is going to be a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying 53 second-generation Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. These satellites will work with the rest of the Starlink constellation to provide internet to customers on Earth. This mission is scheduled to launch at 7:10 a.m. UTC from Cape Canaveral in Florida and will be streamed online.
The second launch of the week will also happen on Monday and it’s yet another Falcon 9. This time it will be conducting the Transporter-8 rideshare mission, which should have happened last week. This mission will carry dozens of small microsatellites and nanosatellites for commercial and government customers. It will fly at 9:00 p.m. UTC from Cape Canaveral in Florida and will be streamed online too.
Friday, June 16
The final launch will see Arianespace launch an Ariane 5 ECA+ rocket carrying the Heinrich Hertz and Syracuse 4B satellites to orbit.
The Heinrich Hertz satellite is a comms satellite built by OHB and funded by the German government while the Syracuse 4B satellite was built by Airbus to relay secure comms between French military aircraft, ground vehicles, and naval vessels.
The launch window for this mission is between 9:16 p.m. and 11:01 p.m. UTC and it’ll take off from French Guyana.
Recap
The first launch we got last week was a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites the space. As is becoming a regular occurrence, the first stage of the rocket landed for reuse.
Next up, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon cargo spacecraft to the ISS.
The third launch was that of CAS Space’s Lijian-1 rocket which launch 26 small satellites into space.
Finally, a Kuaizhou-1A rocket launched the Longjiang-3 satellite which will be used for communications.
That’s all for this week, check back next time!
