Both SpaceX and NASA have postponed this week’s planned launch of Axiom Space’s fourth private crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS), following leaks discovered on both the vehicle and subsequently on the Space Station’s Zvezda module. The flight was due to debut the fifth and final Crew Dragon capsule, and would further increase the record for cumulative time spent in space by an American astronaut.
SpaceX scheduled three Starlink missions this week, while Rocket Lab has launched the fourth batch of imaging satellites for its Japan-based customer. Launches for the week also included a seismo-electromagnetic satellite mission from China, while the second batch of satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper megaconstellation was delayed to Monday June 16 and then scrubbed during its first launch attempt.
SpaceX celebrated the 500th launch of a Falcon rocket last week with the Starlink 12-19 mission, which was also the company’s 70th launch of the year and its first for June. SpaceX achieved a total of 17 launches in May, with 16 Falcon 9 launches and the ninth test flight of Starship.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-24
The first of three Starlink missions scheduled for the week launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida. Onboard was another batch of 23 Starlink satellites – a mix of the v2 Mini and 13 Direct-to-Cell variants of the satellites. Liftoff took place at the top of a typical four-hour window, at 9:03 AM EDT (13:03 UTC) on Tuesday, June 10.
The booster supporting this mission was B1083 on its 12th flight. It landed successfully on the deck of the autonomous droneship Just Read The Instructions, stationed downrange, approximately eight minutes into the mission. This booster made its debut last March with the Crew-4 mission, going on to support Polaris Dawn and later revisiting the ISS with the CRS-31 cargo resupply mission, amongst others.
At the start of the week, SpaceX had launched 8,851 Starlink satellites, of which 6,715 are in their operational orbits.
Falcon 9 on the pad at LC-39A ahead of the Axiom-4 launch (Credit: SpaceX)
Axiom Space was planning to return crew to the International Space Station (ISS) this week on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4). The launch had been indefinitely delayed by SpaceX, however, following the discovery on Tuesday evening of a liquid oxygen leak in the engine bay of the first stage following a brief 7-second static fire test. A leak had been previously detected following Booster B1094’s maiden flight and was believed to have been addressed during refurbishment. NASA has subsequently reported that the mission will be postponed while it works with Roscosmos to investigate a new leak that has been discovered on the Zvezda service module of the ISS.
This will be the seventh private Dragon mission and the 18th crewed launch for SpaceX. A revised launch date and time are yet to be announced – the flight will liftoff from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, is commanding the mission — her second commercial human spaceflight, having flown on the Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) mission a little over two years ago. Joining her are Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, serving as pilot, and two mission specialists: European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
The Ax-4 crew in the Crew Dragon C213 capsule. (Credit: SpaceX)
This mission will serve as Crew Dragon C213’s maiden flight, during which it is expected to be named by the crew. SpaceX has indicated this will be the last Crew Dragon capsule to be manufactured. Dragon will remain docked at the ISS for up to 14 days while the crew conducts 60 scientific studies and activities for multiple countries around the world. These experiments heavily focus on human health, plant and microbial biology, and the effects of microgravity, and include technology demonstrations from Axiom Space, ISRO, and ESA.
Upon the completion of the mission, Dragon will splash down off the coast of California and will be recovered by one of SpaceX’s recovery ships. Booster B1094 is due to launch this mission on its second flight, having carried Starlink Group 12-10 to orbit just 42 days before the intended June 11 launch date. B1094 is expected to perform a return-to-launch-site landing shortly after liftoff, touching down on the concrete pad at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1).
Peggy Whitson already holds the record for the longest cumulative time in space by an American astronaut, which will grow with this mission. The flight features several additional milestones: Shubhanshu Shukla will become India’s second astronaut to reach space since 1984; Sławosz Uznański will become the second Polish astronaut to reach space since 1978; and Tibor Kapu will become Hungary’s second astronaut to reach space since 1980. The mission is also expected to set the record for the most research activities conducted during an Axiom Space mission to date.
Electron launches a Gen-3 satellite for BlackSky on June 3. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
Electron | The Mountain God Guards
Rocket Lab launched its 66th Electron mission on Wednesday, June 11, from Launch Complex 1A (LC-1A) at the company’s Mahia launch facility in New Zealand. Liftoff occured early in the 50-minute launch window, at 3:31 AM NZST (15:31 UTC). Onboard was another small high-performance QPS-SAR satellite for its Japan-based customer, the Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc. (iQPS). iQPS intends to build a constellation of 36 satellites capable of monitoring specific points on Earth every 10 minutes. This satellite will join three others, all delivered via Electron, in an orbit 575 km in altitude.
The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellites mass 100 kg and utilise a lightweight, large stowable antenna to collect high-resolution images of the Earth through all weather conditions. This was the fourth mission for this customer, following the “The Lightning God Reigns” and “The Sea God Reigns” missions earlier this year, which form part of an eight-launch contract with iQPS that runs through 2026.
Rocket Lab also launched “The Moon God Awakens” for the company in December 2023. Electron has now launched 227 satellites into space.
Starlink satellites are released during Starlink Group 15-5, which launched from SLC-4E on May 16. (Credit: SpaceX)
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 15-6
The second Starlink mission of the week, Starlink Group 15-6, was the fifth mission to launch into the Group 15 shell. The mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday, June 12 at 6:54 PM PDT (01:54 UTC on June 13).
The flight carried a batch of 26 Starlink v2 Mini satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) after flying on a southerly trajectory. Following deployment, the satellites will make their way into a 535 km orbit, inclined 70 degrees. The booster supporting this mission was B1081 on its 15th flight, which then landed successfully on the deck of SpaceX’s droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
Starlink has now crossed six million subscribers this month, doubling the number of users in the last year.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-26
The third Starlink mission of the week, and the second mission to fly from SLC-40, launched on Friday, June 13. A Falcon 9 carried another batch of 23 Starlink v2 Mini satellites into LEO for the Starlink Group 12-26 mission, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities. Liftoff took place at 11:29 AM EST (15:29 UTC) at the back end of a four-hour launch window. The flight was notable for the lengthy vapor cone seen at the end of the first minute of flight.
The vehicle took a southeasterly trajectory before deploying the satellites, which will then move to a 559 km orbit, inclined 43 degrees. Booster B1078 flew its 21st mission following a 40 day turnaround and landed successfully on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas waiting downrange. Active since March 2023, this booster has 16 other Starlink missions under its belt, and made its debut lofting crew to the ISS on the Crew-6 mission.
This completed the 500th successful orbital launch of the Falcon family and was also the final flight for the Starlink Direct to Cell satellites – for now. This mission completed the first generation constellation of these satellites, while Starlink have suggested there is a second generation satellite design in the works.
Chang Zheng 2D on the pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. (Credit: CCTV)
Chang Zheng 2D | Zhangheng-1 02
A Chinese Chang Zheng 2D (CZ-2D) launched from Site 9401 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on Saturday, June 14 near the start of the 33-minute launch window at 3:48 PM CST (07:48 UTC). On board was a Zhangheng 1 research satellite for monitoring ionospheric indicators that could correlate to seismic events such as earthquakes. Also known as the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite, OR CSES, this is the second of its kind – its predecessor launched seven years ago in 2018. The project is a collaboration between the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and will monitor electromagnetic fields, plasma and high-energy particles in near-Earth space.
This was the fifth flight of a CZ-2D in 2025, and the 99th overall flight of the CZ-2D as it approaches its centenary launch. The previous flight, almost a month to the date, lofted the initial 12 satellites for ADA Space’s Space Computing Constellation into a Sun-synchronous orbit.
Atlas V 551 | Project Kuiper KA-02
United Launch Alliance (ULA) had delayed the launch of a second batch of 27 Kuiper satellites into LEO due to multiple weather delays during launch processing. The first launch attempt on Monday, June 16, from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) in Florida, was subsequently scrubbed during launch preparations. ULA reported around T-32 minutes that it will evaluate an engineering observation that was made of an elevated purge temperature within the booster engine, and will release a new launch date when available.
The mission will, again, utilise a heavy-lift Atlas V in its 551 configuration, using five solid rocket boosters, a 5.4 m fairing, and one RL-10 engine on the Centaur upper stage. Satellites are deployed three at a time over 15 minutes at approximately 450 km in altitude.
Amazon’s Project Kuiper plans to launch a global broadband constellation of over 3,200 satellites across 98 orbital planes to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet. The first batch of satellites was successfully launched in late April, over a year behind initial projections. In July 2020, the FCC authorised Kuiper to deploy 1,618 satellites — half of the constellation’s first phase — by the end of July 2026.
Six additional Kuiper launches are planned on Atlas V 551 rockets, which extend into 2026. Additional flights have been booked aboard ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Arianespace’s Ariane 6, and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to meet Kuiper’s deployment target, which requires three batches of 27 satellites to be launched per month. Around 578 satellites are required in orbit for Kuiper to begin offering internet service.
(Lead image: Atlas V launches the first operational batch of Kuiper satellites in April 2025. Credit: Max Evans for NSF)
