Several significant missions were scheduled for this week, including the third lunar lander to launch in just over a month. The Intuitive Machines-2 (IM-2) mission will explore and analyze the Moon’s subsurface, testing new technologies and paving the way for future lunar missions. NASA is also set to launch its SPHEREx observatory, which will map hundreds of millions of galaxies to study the origins of the universe, uncover “cosmic inflation,” and search for the building blocks of life.
In addition to these two Falcon 9 missions, SpaceX also launched two Starlink missions, while Starship’s eighth flight test will now launch no earlier than Wednesday, March 5, following a scrub on Monday’s attempt. Blue Origin’s crewed missions resumed on Tuesday when New Shepard launched a crew of six past the Kármán line.
Internationally, Roscosmos has launched the MS-30 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and also launched a navigation satellite. The second launch attempt of Europe’s Ariane 6 has also been postponed to Wednesday, with further work being required on ground support equipment. China also attempted to launch two missions this week.
New Shepard NS-30 mission patch. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Hot on the heels of Blue Origin’s NS-29 lunar gravity-simulating mission earlier this month, New Shepard’s tenth crewed mission launched on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 9:49 AM CST (15:49 UTC). Lifting off from Launch Site One at the company’s West Texas launch facility, the New Shepard capsule experienced approximately three to four minutes of microgravity as it reached a peak altitude of around 107 km to 110 km during its approximately 10-minute mission.
The six crew aboard RSS First Step for this flight included a returning astronaut, cybersecurity founder, and philanthropist Lane Bess, who previously flew on New Shepard for the NS-19 mission in 2021. Joining Bess was Jesús Calleja, a Spanish TV host and adventurer who has visited the North and South Poles and climbed the world’s Seven Summits.
Also onboard were entrepreneur, pilot, and physicist Elaine Chia Hyde; research scientist, pilot, and philanthropist Dr. Richard Scott; and Tushar Shar, head of research at a New York quantitative hedge fund. The final crew member’s name was not disclosed. The booster, also known as Tail 4, landed successfully back at the launch site just over seven minutes into the flight. New Shepard has now carried 52 people into space.
IM-2 Nova-C lander Athena is encapsulated by Falcon 9’s payload fairings ahead of launch. (Credit: SpaceX)
A Falcon 9 launched several payloads to the Moon, including the IM-2 mission for Intuitive Machines, from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff took place on Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 7:17 PM (00:17 UTC on Feb 27). Four payloads will be carried into a trans-lunar injection orbit, including Intuitive Machines’ second Nova C lunar lander, Athena. The IM-2 mission will pave the way for future Artemis lunar missions, focusing on exploring and analyzing the Moon’s subsurface. Athena will be the third lunar lander to have launched this year, all of which have flown on a Falcon 9 from LC-39A.
In contrast to the two lunar landers launched a month ago, Athena carries cryogenic propellants and will take a more direct route to the Moon. It is expected to arrive in lunar orbit four days later, on March 2. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, currently in lunar orbit, is on course to land on the lunar surface on March 6. The Hakuto-R Resilience lander, however, is taking a more complex but fuel-efficient route and will enter lunar orbit in May.
The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) instrument onboard Athena will demonstrate the extraction of lunar regolith from up to three feet below the surface. The MSolo mass spectrometer will search for the presence of volatiles such as water ice and measure how much is lost to sublimation as it turns from a solid into vapor in the vacuum.
Grace, the Micro-Nova lander craft, traveled to the lunar surface with Athena. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)
Grace, A Micro Nova (μNova) deployable lander, will also demonstrate robotic access beyond that of small rovers and into more extreme lunar environments. The propulsive robot will “hop” into and out of permanently shadowed craters and can travel up to 25 km from Athena and hop to 100 m in altitude. The Micro Nova can transport up to 10 kg of payload, depending on the range, and transmits its data via UHF and Nokia’s 4G on the lunar surface, where it is then relayed via Athena back to Earth.
Falcon 9 also carried the 200 kg Lunar Trailblazer (SIMPLEx 5) orbiter, which will endeavor to determine the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the lunar surface and its relation to geology. It will travel from the L1 Lagrange point and spiral down to a roughly 100 km circular polar orbit over six months, where it will then orbit for around one year.
This flight also transported AstroForge’s microwave-sized Odin spacecraft on a trajectory out of the Earth-Moon system, where it will then perform a one-kilometer fly-by of asteroid 2022 OB5 in around 11 months. The company plans to mine asteroids for resources on later missions. Also performing a flyby will be a Sherpa Escape orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), which will utilize the trans-lunar injection to perform a flyby of the Moon. Following the flyby, the OTV will insert itself into a geosynchronous equatorial orbit, where it will deploy customer payloads as part of the cislunar rideshare mission GEO Pathfinder.
The first stage supporting this mission was B1083 on its ninth mission. This booster had previously flown crew on the Polaris Dawn and Crew-8 missions and the CRS-31 cargo supply mission to the International Space Station, amongst others. Following launch and stage separation, the booster performed the 100th landing on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, which was stationed downrange in the Atlantic.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-13
Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 10:34 PM EST (03:34 UTC on Feb 27). The mission had been rescheduled twice this week. A planned launch on Monday, Feb. 24 was scrubbed after being pushed to the back end of the launch window due to weather, and a second attempt the next day was scrubbed for undeclared reasons, despite 95 percent favorable weather.
The vehicle carried another 21 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO), heading southeast from the launch site. Following deployment, the satellites will now move into their final orbit at an altitude of 559 km, inclined 53 degrees. The first stage supporting this mission had not been officially confirmed, but was suspected to be new booster B1092 taking its maiden flight. It landed successfully on SpaceX’s autonomous droneship Just Read the Instructions, which was waiting downrange in the Atlantic. SpaceX celebrated its 450th mission with last Friday’s Starlink Group 12-14 flight on Feb. 21.
At the start of the week, SpaceX had launched 7,929 total Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 899 have re-entered, and 6,264 have moved into their operational orbits.
Aerial view of a Chang Zheng 2C on the pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s Site 9401 from the PIESAT-2 mission in November 2024. (Credit: CCTV/CGTN)
Chang Zheng 2C | SuperView Neo 1-03 & 04
A Chang Zheng 2C (CZ-2C) rocket launched from Site 9401 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 07:08 UTC. This mission had a short launch window lasting just under half an hour and lofted the third and fourth satellites in the Siwei Gaojing, or SuperView Neo, constellation. These Earth observation satellites have a resolution of 0.5 m and will operate in sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 km. The satellites boast various imaging modes including high-definition “anti-shake” imaging, according to the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
This was the first launch of the year for this long-serving launch vehicle which has been flying for nearly 43 years. CZ-2C vehicles recently lofted satellites including PIESAT-2, SuperView Neo, and Yaogan 43, in the final months of 2024. The two-stage rocket has been in service since 1982 and is powered by the storable hypergolic liquid propellants nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine.
A Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying a Progress cargo resupply vehicle lifted off to the ISS on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 21:24 UTC. Launching from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the vehicle was carrying just under 7,300 kg of cargo to the Station. The spacecraft docked autonomously to the aft port of the Zvezda module of the ISS just over two days later on March 1 at 23:03 UTC.
Progress will remain docked to the ISS until August, when it will be deorbited and expended. While this is the 82nd flight of a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, it will be the 183rd mission for a Progress spacecraft.
Energia completed work on the Progress spacecraft in its Korelev factory last September. It was then shipped by rail to the Baikonur Cosmodrome for final testing and propellant loading in January. The pressurized component was loaded in mid-February with consumables such as food and research equipment, while the unpressurized component carries water, propellant, and gases, which will replenish supplies aboard the Station after docking. MS-30 was then shipped to the assembly building for final integration ahead of last weekend.
A Kuaizhou 1A was expected to launch on Saturday, March 1 around 10:00 UTC from Site 95A at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. While details of the vehicle and payload remained uncertain, unconfirmed rumours suggest there may have been an explosion before, or shortly after, ignition.
Render of the GLONASS-K2 satellite in orbit. (Credit: Russian Space Systems)
Soyuz 2.1b | GLONASS-K2 No. 14L
A Soyuz-2.1b rocket launched Russia’s latest navigation satellite into medium-Earth orbit on Sunday, March 3, at 22:22 UTC. Liftoff took place from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia during a two-hour launch window.
The radio-based Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS) system is similar to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services globally. Civilian accuracy of the existing constellation is around two to five meters, while military users benefit from higher precision.
The GLONASS-K design improves on the previous GLONASS-M second-generation satellites, with atomic clocks providing even greater accuracy to potentially sub-meter levels. The satellites also feature a longer 10-year lifespan and improved interoperability with other global systems such as GPS and Galileo.
Starlink Satellites are deployed during the Starlink Group 12-8 mission. (Credit: SpaceX)
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-20
This week’s second scheduled Starlink mission was originally set to launch on Thursday, Feb. 27 but took flight on Sunday, March 2, at 9:24 PM EST (02:24 UTC on March 3) from SLC-40 at the CCSFS in Florida. The vehicle headed southeast from the launch site, carrying another 21 Starlink satellites into LEO.
Despite the numbering, this was the 15th launch into the Group 12 shell of the Starlink constellation. With the pad at LC-39A being prepared for the IM-2 mission, SLC-40 has served as the launch site for all of February’s Starlink missions from the east coast.
The first stage for this mission was booster B1086. Taking its fifth and final flight, this booster first supported the GOES-U mission last June, and has since launched WorldView Legion 5 and 6 as well as two other Starlink launches into this same Group 12 shell. The stage landed successfully on the east coast droneship Just Read The Instructions approximately eight minutes into the flight. However, an off-nominal fire in its aft end resulted in damage to one of the landing legs and caused the booster to subsequently tip over. “While disappointing to lose a rocket after a successful mission”, SpaceX posted, “the team will use the data to make Falcon even more reliable on ascent and landing.”
(Lead image: Falcon 9 launches into the Florida skies. Credit: Julia Bergeron for NSF)
