JThis week’s schedule included up to six Starlink launches from Florida and California, but poor weather meant only four flew. Arianespace launched the Biomass satellite aboard a Vega C from Kourou, and Firefly Aerospace attempted to launch its first Alpha rocket of the year.
SpaceX has already launched 50 times this year and celebrated its 250th dedicated Starlink mission last week. As the week began, SpaceX had launched 8,367 Starlink satellites into orbit. Of these, 1,103 have re-entered and 7,264 remain in orbit. This total includes 600 Direct-to-Cell satellites, with approximately 400 of these currently in active service.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-10
Starlink Group 12-10 launched atop a Falcon 9 on Monday, April 28, at 10:34 PM EDT (Tuesday, April 29, at 02:34 UTC). The mission lifted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, carrying a mix of v2 Mini and Direct-to-Cell satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO).
The unconfirmed booster, thought to be B1094 on its maiden flight, flew on a southeasterly trajectory to place the payload into an orbit inclined 43 degrees. Starlink Group 12 has a nominal altitude of 559 km. Following separation, the booster successfully made a controlled landing on SpaceX’s autonomous droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, a few miles north of the Bahamas. This flight was the 50th Falcon 9 mission of 2025.
Falcon 9 is a 3.9-meter diameter, 70-meter-tall two-stage rocket. The first stage booster is powered by nine Merlin 1D engines, while the second utilizes a single vacuum-optimized Merlin engine. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the first and only reusable orbital rockets in service today, with one Falcon booster having flown twenty-seven flights. The two payload fairings are also recovered and reused after flight.
The Biomass satellite ships from Toulouse to Kourou (Credit: Airbus)
The first launch of a Vega-C rocket in 2025 took place on Tuesday, April 29, at 09:15 UTC from the Ensemble de Lancement Vega (ELV) at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. Vega-C delivered the Biomass satellite to a Sun-synchronous orbit at 660 km altitude, flying on a northwesterly trajectory out of Kourou.
The Biomass satellite was built by Airbus Defence and Space and masses at 1170 kg. It is the seventh in a series of Earth Explorer missions from ESA’s Earth Observation Programme, and carried the first satellite-mounted P-band synthetic aperture radar into orbit. P-band radar enables signals to penetrate forest canopies, giving observers the most accurate global survey of forest height and biomass, a proxy for stored carbon.
In addition, the Biomass mission will map subsurface geology in deserts, the ice structure of ice sheets, and the topography of forest floors. The satellite is expected to operate for at least five years.
Vega C launches Biomass from Guiana Space Center (Credit: Arianespace)
The satellite features a 12 m diameter fine mesh reflector, which is supported by a 7.5 m long boom. The delicate reflector will be slowly unfurled once the satellite is in orbit, using an umbrella-like mechanism. The unfurling will take approximately 20 minutes, but it can only occur once the boom has been fully extended. The boom-extending process takes three days from start to finish, with the boom extending one segment at a time in an operation scheduled to coincide with the satellite’s maximum visibility to ground stations.
The Arianespace Vega-C, which first flew in July 2022, is an enhanced version of the earlier Vega rocket. It features new, larger first and second stages, upgrades to the third and fourth stages, and a wider payload fairing. A P120C solid rocket motor powers the first stage, the same motor used in Ariane 6 boosters, providing a measure of commonality across Arianespace’s fleet, intended to help drive down costs. The second stage is a Zefiro Z40, instead of the smaller Zefiro Z23 used on the original Vega.
Firefly Aerospace launched its FLTA006 Message In A Booster mission on its second attempt from Space Launch Complex-2W (SLC-2W) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California. Alpha took flight on Tuesday, April 29, at 6:37 AM PDT (13:37 UTC). The company had previously scrubbed the day before, following several holds while the team worked an issue with ground support equipment.
This flight was the sixth launch of an Alpha rocket, the second for this customer, Lockheed Martin, and the first of up to 25 flights for Lockheed Martin as part of a multi-launch agreement with Firefly spanning the next five years. Lockheed Martin’s versatile new mid-sized LM400 satellite bus can accommodate a variety of missions, including remote sensing, communications, imaging, and radar operations. This was the largest payload carried by an Alpha rocket to date.
The mission reached second-stage engine cutoff and was expected to deploy its payload during an expected loss-of-signal period. However, Firefly Aerospace has since confirmed that a mishap occurred during stage separation, which impacted the second-stage Lightning engine nozzle. Following an initial assessment, the company announced that Alpha had not reached orbital velocity and that the stage and payload had safely impacted the Pacific Ocean, north of Antarctica.
Render of the Lockheed Martin LM400 tech demonstration. (Credit Lockheed Martin)
The LM400 Pathfinder was designed to demonstrate the technology in orbit and contribute to risk reduction before flying customer missions. While this demonstrator was expected to be deployed to LEO on this mission, the bus is adaptable to multiple orbits and launch configurations, catering to military, civil, and commercial applications.
The two-stage expendable Alpha vehicle stands just under 30 m in height and can deliver 1,030 kg to LEO. Four Reaver engines on the first stage burn liquid kerosene and oxygen in a tap-off cycle, while a single Lightning engine using the same technology powers the upper stage.
NASASpaceflight provided launch livestream production services for Firefly Flight A006.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-75
Starlink Group 6-75 launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday, May 1, at 9:51 PM EDT (01:51 UTC on May 2), at the beginning of the four-hour launch window.
The booster for this mission was B1080, which flew for the eighteenth time. B1080 has previously supported Axion 2, Euclid, Starlink Group 6-11, Starlink Group 6-24, Axion 3, CRS-30, Starlink Group 6-52, Starlink Group 6-62, Astra 1P/SES-24, CRS-21, Starlink Group 10-10, Starlink Group 6-69, Starlink Group 12-1, Starlink Group 12-2, Starlink Group 12-4, Starlink Group 10-12, and Starlink Group 6-80. The booster’s first flight was on May 21, 2023.
Following ascent and stage separation, the booster landed successfuly on Just Read The Instructions, one of SpaceX’s autonomous droneships stationed approximately 640 km downrange, southeast of the launchpad. Fairing recovery was supported by the SpaceX vessel Bob.
Falcon 9 carried 28 v2 Mini satellites into LEO, a joint record for maximum mass on a Starlink mission. (Equal with Starlink 6-72, 6-74, and 6-80). The payload was be delivered into an orbit with an inclination of 43 degrees, at a nominal altitude of 530 km. This mission was the 248th Falcon 9 launch from SLC-40, the most frequently used pad by SpaceX for its Falcon 9 missions, and Falcon 9’s 469th mission overall.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-84
The next Falcon 9 launch of the week occured on Sunday, May 4, at 4:53 AM EDT (08:53 UTC) in spite of a weather prediction for this mission of only 55% favorable. The Starlink Group 6-84 mission launched from LC-39A at KSC in Florida utilizing booster B1078.
B1078 was flying for the 20th time. Previously, B1078 has supported Crew-6, O3b mPower 3 & 4, Starlink Group 6-4, Starlink Group 6-8, Starlink Group 6-16, Starlink Group 6-31, USSF-124, Starlink Group 6-46, Starlink Group 6-53, Starlink Group 6-60, Starlink Group 10.2, Starlink Group 10-6, Bluebird-1, Starlink Group 10-13, Starlink Group 6-76, Starlink Group 12-6, Starlink Group 12-9, Starlink Group 12-16, and Starlink Group 6-72. It’s first flight was on March 2, 2023.
The flight followed a similar trajectory to the Starlink Group 6-75 mission launched earlier in the week, targeting an orbit inclined at 43 degrees with a nominal altitude of 530 km. This was the 4th orbital launch attempt globally, and the 52nd Falcon 9 mission of 2025.
The payload of 29 v2 Mini satellites aboard Falcon is a new record number of satellites in any Starlink launch.
The booster landed successfully on the autonomous droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, stationed north of The Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean.
Chang Zheng 12 | SatNet LEO Group TBD
The Chinese state-owned China Satellite Network Group was scheduled to launch a batch of LEO communications satellites for SatNet’s GuoWang constellation. A Chang Zheng 12 (CZ-12) was due to liftoff on Monday, May 5, at 12:05 UTC from Commercial LC-2 at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China. This launch is reported to be scrubbed for today, with no reason or future launch date given. The rocket was expected to fly on a southeasterly trajectory.
CZ-12 is a 59 m high, two stage booster of 3.8m diameter.
(Lead image: Falcon 9 lofting Starlink 12-23 to space. Credit: Julia Bergeron for NSF)
