Following an exceptionally busy December, this week started the new year with only four scheduled missions, with the possibility of two flights of heavy launch vehicles within the first ten days of January. On the same day as Starship’s seventh flight, Blue Origin’s New Glenn is expected to take its maiden voyage from Florida. This highly anticipated debut launch will also include an attempt to propulsively land the first stage booster on a sea platform.
The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) SPADEX mission closed 2024 with a record 259 orbital missions, placing 25 crew and over 2,700 payloads into orbit and across the solar system. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 carried over 2,300 payloads (85%), including over 1,900 Starlink satellites.
Launch sites in the U.S. and China accounted for 80% of the year’s orbital launch traffic, with 54% and 26% of the share, respectively. An anomaly on the final launch of a Lijian-1 rocket from Jiuquan on Dec. 27 denied China a record number of successful launches. As a result, China matched its 2023 total of 65 successful orbital missions despite launching two more missions in 2024. Russia continued to decline by two launches per year, closing 2024 with 17 flights. While India dropped to just five missions in 2024, it is expected to ramp up flights in 2025 as it pushes forward with its Gaganyaan program.
Europe matched last year’s three orbital missions from its spaceport in French Guiana but is also planning to increase its launch cadence in 2025. The final quarter of the year was significantly more active globally, with a record 14 launches inside seven days in November and 30 orbital launch attempts in December, averaging almost one launch per day!
Rocket Lab broke its launch record with 16 missions launched in 2024 — a 60% increase on the previous year, all successful. SpaceX finished the year with 134 orbital launches, again breaking its annual cadence record. SpaceX’s 134 launches are only two launches shy of the company’s revised goal of 136 following the flight delays caused in the summer by the failure of Starlink 9-3 and the failed landing of booster B1062. SpaceX reached its 400th orbital launch in October, followed by its 400th Falcon 9 flight in November. This coming year will see the company reach and exceed 25 flights by a flight-proven booster and, in the coming weeks, the 400th successful landing and recovery of a Falcon vehicle first stage.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-6
In the last scheduled launch of 2024, a Falcon 9 lofted another batch of 21 Starlink v2-Mini satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 12:39 AM EST (05:39 UTC). The Falcon 9 launched from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and flew southeast, passing northeast of the Bahamas.
The 16,000 kg payload of satellites included 13 of the direct-to-cell variants. SpaceX recently completed the first phase of its direct-to-cell service and continues to build out the constellation.
Falcon 9 booster B1078 supported this mission on its 16th flight. Approximately eight minutes into the mission, B1078 landed ~600 km downrange on the autonomous droneship Just Read The Instructions. B1078 had previously flown 11 other Starlink missions in addition to satellites for the 03b mPOWER and Bluebird constellations. The booster has been active since March 2023, when it first carried the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station. It has made landings on two SpaceX droneships and both concrete pads at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) and Landing Zone 2 (LZ-2), the latter following the launch of USSF-124 for the United States Space Force.
This was the 132nd Falcon 9 launch of 2024 and the 134th launch of the year for SpaceX.
Render of the Thuraya 4-NG satellite in orbit. (Credit: Thuraya Communications Company)
SpaceX’s first mission of 2025 launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida. Liftoff took place on Friday, Jan. 3, at 8:27 PM EST (01:27 UTC Saturday, Jan. 4).
Falcon 9 carried the Thuraya 4-NGS communication satellite, massing 5,000 kg, into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Airbus Defence and Space built the satellite for Thuraya Telecommunications using Airbus’ all-electric Eurostar-Neo platform. With a large 12 m L-band antenna, the satellite can apply dynamic power allocation across many spot beams, with advanced routing flexibility of up to 3,200 channels. The satellite is part of Thuraya’s transformational program, which includes its satellite and ground infrastructure. The beams, channel size, and bandwidth are reconfigurable while in orbit, supporting hotspot surges and offering users a wide range of data rates above one megabit per second. The satellite will service users in Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, as well as vast stretches of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
Booster B1073 supported this mission on its 20th flight, landing successfully on the autonomous droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas downrange to the east in the Atlantic Ocean. This booster has been active since May, 2022 and has lofted CRS-27 to the International Space Station in addition to missions including the Bandwagon-1 rideshare, Hakuto-R, and 13 Starlink missions amongst others.
The first launch from China this year lifted off from pad LC-3 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Monday, Jan. 6 at 20:00 UTC, during a launch window which lasted just over half an hour. The payload was a Shijian 25 satellite which is expected to test satellite and spacecraft refuelling, and was sent into a geostationary transfer orbit. This vehicle previously lofted the latest TJSW communications satellite in late December, just 17 days after its 100th milestone flight and nearly three decades in active service. The CZ-3B/E is expected to further increase its cadence, launching more than ten times per year, moving forward.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-71
The first Starlink mission of the year was rescheduled and launched on Monday, Jan 6 from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff took place at 3:43 PM EST (20:43 UTC) towards the very end of the four-hour launch window. The vehicle headed southeast before deploying its payload of 24 Starlink v2-Mini satellites which will now make their way into a 559 km orbit, inclined 43 degrees.
The booster supporting this mission was B1077 on its 17th flight, which successfully landed on the droneship Just Read The Instructions around eight and a half minutes into the mission. This was the booster which was originally assigned to the Astranis mission but experienced an aborted ignition and was swapped out for B1083. The booster first lifted Crew-5 to orbit in October 2022, and later returned to the ISS with the CRS-28 and NG-20 cargo missions. In addition to nine previous Starlink missions, B1077 has also lofted satellites for various constellations including GPS III, Inmarsat, Galaxy 37, and most recently carried the Optus-X/TD7 communications satellite for Australian operator Optus.
Static fire of New Glenn on Dec. 27. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Following a successful 24-second static fire of a full integrated stack for the first time on Dec. 27, Blue Origin was originally set to debut its New Glenn heavy-lift launcher this week on Sunday, Jan. 5. This has since been pushed back a few times and the launch is currently expected on Friday, Jan 10 at 01:00 AM EST (06:00 UTC) from Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at the CCSFS in Florida. New Glenn has been in design and development for well over a decade. It is named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to reach orbit 62 years ago in February 1962 on the Friendship 7 mission.
In addition to flying on its maiden launch, the GS1-SN001 first stage booster, playfully named So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, will attempt to land on the company’s recovery vessel Jacklyn, which will be stationed around 620 km downrange in the Atlantic. This will mark the company’s first propulsive landing of an orbital class booster and the first recovery attempt on Jacklyn.
The two-stage New Glenn rocket stands 98 m tall and seven meters in diameter. Seven of the company’s BE-4 engines will power the first stage, giving it a thrust of 17,150 kN at liftoff. These same engines are used on the first stage of the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket and use liquid methane and liquid oxygen as propellants. New Glenn can carry 45,000 kg to LEO or 13,000 kg to GTO. The rocket was originally expected to carry NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission on its maiden launch, injecting two spacecraft on a direct interplanetary trajectory to study Mars’ magnetosphere. This mission has since been rescheduled to this spring and will now be launched as New Glenn’s third mission.
In its place is DarkSky-1, a prototype pathfinder of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft. This multi-mission capable space mobility platform will be able to deliver 3,000 kg of payloads to various orbits, including cislunar and interplanetary space. This demonstration will last around six hours and validate Blue Ring’s core systems, including orbit-to-ground communications, telemetry, and radiometric tracking used on the production vehicle.
Amongst the many milestone firsts associated with this flight, it will also act as Blue Origin’s first certification flight for the U.S. government’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. A second NSSL demonstration flight is expected in March when New Glenn will carry a prototype of the Blue Moon lunar lander — the first of two planned pathfinder missions carrying landers in 2025. New Glenn will also loft at least one batch of Kuiper satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation, for which it is contracted to carry 12 missions.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued Blue Origin a five-year Part 450 launch license from the Cape just hours before the static fire. The company expects to increase New Glenn’s launch cadence to eight launches per year, introducing dual-manifesting after the rocket’s initial missions.
(Lead Image: New Glenn stands ready atop LC-36. Credit: Blue Origin)
