This week, Japanese commercial company Space One stood down two attempts to launch its Kairos vehicle for the second time, while SpaceX has four Falcon 9 launches at the end of the week from Friday onwards. These include customer missions carrying satellites for the 03b mPOWER and GPS-III constellations and another for the National Reconnaissance Office.
This week opened with five launches on the schedule — half of the 11 total orbital launches from an exceptionally busy week before. As the week progressed, additional launches from China included two more towards the very end of the week. These include a Chang Zheng 5B carrying the first batch of satellites for the GuoWang constellation, also known as SatNet.
A record-breaking 14 rocket launches had taken place worldwide in the seven days leading to the launch of a Simorgh rocket on Friday, Dec. 6. These included launches from the U.S., China, Russia, India, French Guiana, and Iran. Six launches were originally expected to take place in one day, Dec. 4, two of which were subsequently moved to later in the week. In total, there were 29 orbital flights in November, averaging almost one per day, and the month closed with a record-breaking 229 orbital launches so far this year worldwide, beating 2023’s record of 221.
Adding to the milestones, SpaceX completed its 350th flight with a flight-proven booster last week on the Starlink Group 9-14 launch and performed its 100th droneship landing of the year on this week’s Starlink Group 11-2 mission. The RRT-1 mission this week will also be the company’s 400th recovery attempt of a Falcon vehicle.
The company also completed its first Direct-to-Cell constellation shell on this mission, which consists of 24 planes, each containing 13 satellites at a 53-degree inclination at an operational altitude of 360 km. In the same week, the company achieved the 100th successful landing on its droneship Just Read The Instructions.
Chang Zheng 2D/YZ-3 launches five test satellites for the.HJigh Speed Diamond Laser Constellation from Jiuquan SLC on Dec. 12. (Credit: CASC)
Chang Zheng 2D/YZ-3 | High-Speed Laser Diamond Constellation Test
This morning’s launch was initially anticipated to be that of Galactic Energy’s Gushenxing-1, or Ceres-1, rocket as the week began. Instead, a Chang Zheng 2D with a Yuanzheng-3 upper stage lifted off from Site 9401, also known as SLS-2, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu Province of China.
On board were five satellites that will perform testing and verification of a new High-Speed Laser Diamond constellation in low-Earth orbit for the University of Science and Technology, understood to take the form of flat panel style satellites. This was the 93rd flight for this vehicle type, all of which have been successful.
Falcon 9 lifts off from pad SLC-4E at Vandenberg, completing SpaceX’s 125th mission of 2024. (Credit: SpaceX)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 11-2
This mission sent a second group of 22 Starlink v2-Mini satellites into Group 11 of the Starlink constellation, the first of which flew over four months ago at the start of August. The mission lifted off on Friday, Dec 13, at 1:55 PM PST (21:55 UTC) after being pushed back into the typical four-hour launch window from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Falcon 9 flew on a southeasterly trajectory to place the satellites into an initial 273 by 283 km orbit, inclined 53 degrees. The first-stage booster, B1082, flew for the ninth time and successfully landed on the autonomous droneship Of Course I Still Love You approximately eight minutes into the mission. This booster has supported six other Starlink launches since its first flight this January and has also lofted USSF-62 and OneWeb 20 for customers.
This was the company’s 125th mission of the year. Prior to this mission, SpaceX launched 7,523 Starlink satellites, of which 6,031 have now moved into their operational orbits.
Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket on a suborbital mission from Launch Complex 2 at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (also known as MARS) at the southern tip of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Liftoff took place near the top of the launch window, which lasted a little over four hours, on Friday, Dec. 13 at 8:00 PM EST (01:00 UTC on Dec 14).
This was a Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron (HASTE) mission for an undisclosed customer and the 15th Electron to fly this year, with another mission, “Owl The Way Up,” preparing for launch next week. HASTE missions enable customers to launch payloads up to 700 kg into custom trajectories, using a modified third stage on the vehicle, and reaches payload separation altitudes of 80 km and beyond.
Render of Spaceport Kii with pad and integration building. (Credit: Space One)
Following a troubled maiden launch attempt in March, Japanese commercial launch company Space One has stood down two attempts to launch its Kairos rocket this week, on Dec. 14 and 15, due to upper-level wind speeds. The next opportunity is Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 02:00 UTC.
Named after the Greek god of opportunity, the rocket was expected to lift off from Spaceport Kii – the company’s dedicated launch site in the Kii Peninsula within the Wakayama Prefecture. This 15-hectare site includes a pad, tower, control center, storage, and integration facilities, opening out to the sea at the southernmost point of Japan’s main island of Honshu.
The vehicle will target a Sun-synchronous orbit at 500 km altitude and is expected to carry a 50 kg Tarara-1 micro-satellite alongside four cubesats measuring 3U each, built by high school students in partnership with Terra Space. The primary satellite includes the first Buddha statue to launch into orbit, enshrined at the top of what has been dubbed the Kounji (Space) Temple. Following deployment at around 55 minutes into the mission at an altitude of 500 km, the upper stage will perform a retrograde burn to deorbit itself.
The first flight of the Kairos small satellite launcher was also the first launch from Space One’s launch facility and was planned to be the country’s first orbital launch from the private sector. The vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly just seconds into the flight at an altitude of less than 100 m when a lower-than-expected rate of thrust triggered the rocket’s automatic termination system.
The Kairos vehicle is similar in size to Rocket Lab’s Electron, standing 18 m tall with a diameter of 1.5 m. Massing 23,000 kg, it is capable of carrying 250 kg to LEO or 150 kg to a Sun-synchronous orbit at 500 km. The first three stages are solid-fuelled, using motors developed by IHI Aerospace, an investor in Space One, which have also been used on JAXA’s Epsilon rocket. A fourth upper kick stage is liquid-fuelled. Space One plans to build its launch cadence to a level greater than the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA), with intentions to increase to 20 launches per year before the end of the decade.
Chang Zheng 5B rolled to pad LC-101 at Wenchang. (Credit: Xiaoling Weather and Space Time)
Chang Zheng 5B/YZ-2 | SatNet LEO Group 01
Using a Yuanzheng-2 (YZ-2) upper stage, this mission launched the first batch of 10 satellites for the long-anticipated GuoWang mega constellation, also known as SatNet. Chang Zheng 5B (CZ-5B) hardware had been on-site at the Wenchang Space Launch Center since early November, and crates marked up for the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) were also spotted at the launch center. The CZ-5B vehicle was rolled out to the pad LC-101 on Dec. 10 and liftoff took place on Monday, Dec. 16 at 10:00 UTC.
While the CZ-5B is anticipated to be the main carrier for this craft, the Tianlong-3 is also expected to carry batches for this constellation, which was originally expected to beat the first Qianfan satellites to orbit. This national-backed competitor to the G60 constellation also has ambitions to build in size to around 13,000 satellites.
The CZ-5B variation of China’s most powerful heavy-lift vehicle has only flown four times in the past, carrying each of the Tianhe, Wentian, and Mentian modules to construct the Tiangong space station in the 18 months leading to its most recent flight at the end of October 2022. The variation drops the second stage of the taller CZ-5 carrier and can place up to 25,000 kg into low-Earth orbit.
Chang Zheng 2D | PIESAT-2 09-12
A Chang Zheng 2D lifted off on Monday, Dec. 18 at 18:55 UTC from pad LC-9 at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the Shanxi Province of China. As suspected, the payload was the second batch of PIESAT-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, the first of which were launched on a Chang Zheng 2C vehicle in early November this year. The original four were sent into a Sun-synchronous orbit and were the first of 16 planned for this constellation for ZhuZhou Space, which uses X-band and is planned to be operational by mid-2025.
Render of the enhanced GPS IIIF satellite. (Credit: Lockheed Martin)
This launch for the U.S. Space Force has been delayed following a standdown from the first attempt due to high winds. The mission was due to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) on Friday, Dec. 13, but has now been rescheduled to Monday, Dec. 16 at 7:52 EST (00:52 UTC on Dec. 17).
There is limited official information regarding the payload on this mission from SpaceX, including what the RRT-1 acronym stands for. However, it is suspected that this is a GPS-III 10 satellite that will be carried into a medium-Earth orbit, building the third generation of the global positioning system (GPS). The mission name may be an abbreviation of ‘Retro Reflective Target 1’, referring to an additional instrument that could be onboard the satellite for NASA, enabling range measurements to be performed on a sub-centimeter level using reflective laser ranging equipment.
The Navstar-3 program leverages technological advances to modernize the original GPS, which was first launched in 1978. GPS-3 improves positioning, navigating, and timing services for civil and military users worldwide, with increased resistance to jamming and spoofing through M-code security algorithms.
Built on Lockheed Martin’s A2100M satellite bus, each satellite carries eight deployable antennas manufactured by Northrop Grumman. The GPS has been operational for almost three decades, with six Block 3 satellites already in service and another three ready for launch on Vulcan Centaur rockets next year. This will be the sixth GPS Block 3 satellite to be launched on a Falcon 9 since the launch of the first nearly six years ago.
The booster supporting this mission is taking its fourth flight, having made its debut in August this year. B1085 took its maiden flight with Starlink Group 10-5 and went on to carry Crew-9 to the International Space Station on its second mission. The booster is expected to land on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, marking SpaceX’s 400th attempt to recover a Falcon vehicle.
A Falcon 9 is suspected to be launching the sixth batch of Starshield satellites built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on Tuesday, Dec. 17, having been moved to the right by 24 hours. The launch is now scheduled to lift off from SLC-4E at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:20 AM PST (09:20 UTC). The booster supporting this mission has not yet been confirmed but is expected to land about eight minutes into the mission on the autonomous droneship, Of Course I Still Love You, which will be waiting downrange.
The mission follows the similarly classified NROL-126 which took off from the same pad on Nov. 30. As the NRO continues to build and fortify the largest government constellation in history, two further missions – NRO-153 and NRO-192 – are also potentially due to fly before the year is out.
Boeing delivers the latest pair of 03b mPower satellites to SES. (Credit: Boeing/Sally Aristei)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | 03b mPOWER 7 & 8
This was originally planned to be the first of two back-to-back missions with three hours of each other on Dec. 13 but has since been moved later in the week. SpaceX is launching the fourth pair of O3b mPOWER high-throughput and low-latency internet satellites for operator SES this week. The launch has been pushed back to Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 3:58 PM EST (20:58 UTC) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, targeting a medium-Earth orbit.
The 03b mPOWER system is already operational with six satellites in orbit and, following this mission, will launch another three satellites in 2025, with a final pair launching in 2026. Boeing, who will now build two additional satellites beyond its original 11-satellite contract, transported the satellites to the Cape last month from its build facilities in El Segundo, California.
This pair of satellites will feature redesigned power modules, addressing the electrical problems experienced on the first six satellites, impairing their performance and delaying this mission. Each subsequent launch will strengthen the existing constellation, which will have tripled in capacity once it has grown to seven fully capable satellites, with the original six satellites acting as spares. The satellites allow the operator, SES, to dynamically allocate bandwidth and power to their customers as required, generating over 5,000 fully steerable beams.
The booster supporting this mission has not been confirmed but is expected to land on an autonomous droneship stationed approximately 600 km downrange to the east of LC-39A.
(Lead image: Streak as Falcon 9 launches Starlink Group 12-5 mission from SLC-40 at CCSFS on Sunday, Dec. 8. Credit: SpaceX)
