With the month of June coming to a close and July on the horizon, the global launch manifest remains jam-packed. SpaceX has kicked off the week with two Falcon 9 launches from Florida, with a Starlink mission and the launch of a geostationary weather satellite. This doubleheader will be followed by a Chinese launch from Xichang and a Progress cargo flight to the International Space Station. The debut mission for Gilmour Space’s Eris small launcher has been delayed out of the week.
SpaceX started off the week with their workhorse Falcon 9 launching the MTG-S1 mission on Tuesday, July 1, at 5:04 PM EDT (21:04 UTC) from the historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Teams had a two-hour and 27-minute window available for launch.
Falcon 9 launched due east out of KSC, using the Earth’s rotation to gain extra horizontal velocity. As the upper stage transported the payload to an initial parking orbit, the first stage — B1085-9 — returned to land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship stationed downrange in the Atlantic. The upper stage then performed a burn to place the payload into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) before deployment.
The payload for this mission was the Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder 1 (MTG-S1) weather satellite, to be operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). The spacecraft was originally slated to fly on the third flight of Ariane 6 but was remanifested to Falcon 9 due to scheduling reasons.
One day to launch!
The MTG-S1 satellite, carrying the @CopernicusEU Sentinel-4 instrument, is now safely inside the Falcon 9 fairing ahead of launch.Liftoff is scheduled at 23:03 CEST.
📸 Credits: @SpaceX pic.twitter.com/AJRDo4Uan0— ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) June 30, 2025
MTG-S1, massing in at 3,800 kg at launch and set to be renamed Meteosat-13 after commissioning, is one of three MTG satellites that will provide improved weather forecasting data for Europe and Northern Africa. The satellite is outfitted with an infrared sounder — the first for Europe in geostationary orbit — and an ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared light (UVN) spectrometer, provided by ESA as part of the Sentinel-4 instrument package.
The Sentinel-4 payload will monitor air quality over Europe, focusing on detecting trace gas concentrations and aerosols in the atmosphere. The data collected across the three spectral bands will supply hourly air pollution information, thus supporting near-real-time operations.
The launch of MTG-S1 will be the 82nd Falcon 9 launch of the year.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-25
Just nine hours and 24 minutes after completing a flight from KSC, SpaceX turned around and launched a Starlink mission on a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida. Liftoff took place on Wednesday, July 2, at 2:28 AM EDT (06:28 UTC), toward the beginning of a four-hour launch window.
Falcon 9 life leader B1067-29 flew on a northeast trajectory out of the Cape, with the booster successfully touching down softly on the deck of the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship in the Atlantic Ocean, thus becoming the first booster to complete 29 launches and landings. Meanwhile, the second stage continued on to low-Earth orbit (LEO), carrying a batch of 27 Starlink v2 Mini satellites for internet connectivity.
This mission marked the 83rd flight of a Falcon 9 vehicle in 2025, and the 500th mission for the vehicle since its debut launch from the same pad in June 2010. SpaceX hopes to achieve up to 170 Falcon launches before year’s end.
In what was looking to be a momentous occasion for Australia this week, the debut flight of its first homegrown launch vehicle was scheduled to take place within a ten-hour launch window no earlier than Thursday, July 3, at 7:30 AM AEST (21:30 UTC on Wednesday, July 2) from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport at Abbot Point. The launch has since been postponed out of the week in order to accommodate a longer launch window, pending regulatory approval and acceptable weather conditions.
After years of development, testing, and regulatory approvals, Gilmour Space’s three-stage Eris rocket is set to proudly carry the banner of Australia into orbit. The first two stages of Eris utilize hybrid propellants, consisting of a 3D-printed solid fuel grain and a hydrogen peroxide liquid oxidizer, while the third stage uses solely liquid propellants.
UPDATE: TestFlight 1 🚀
We’ve made the tough call to 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲 this week’s launch to give us a longer, more flexible launch window for our first test flight.
Our new target, potentially next week, will depend on weather conditions and green light from regulators. TBA.
— Gilmour Space (@GilmourSpace) July 1, 2025
Eris will fly on a northeasterly trajectory out of the Bowen Orbital Spaceport after liftoff, as Gilmour Space hopes to reach LEO on the vehicle’s first flight. A successful launch would mark the first for an Australian-built rocket and the first for a hybrid-fueled rocket.
The debut launch of Eris was originally scheduled to take place in May, but was delayed after an unexpected power surge triggered the deployment of the rocket’s payload fairing during preflight checks. A replacement fairing was sent from Gilmour’s Gold Coast factory to Bowen and installed, and no damage to the vehicle or launch pad was observed.
Eris will not carry an operational payload for its first launch, though Gilmour Space has humorously placed a container of Vegemite flavor spread inside the payload fairing.
Chang Zheng 4B | Unknown Payload
China’s only scheduled launch of the week is set to occur no earlier than Thursday, July 3, at 09:35 UTC. A Chang Zheng 4B (CZ-4B) rocket will take flight from Launch Complex 3 (LC-3) at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center (XSLC), flying on a southeasterly trajectory. No information on the mission’s payload has been provided.
The three-stage CZ-4B launcher utilizes hypergolic propellants and is capable of sending up to 4,200 kg to LEO and approximately 1,500 kg to a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). Across its 26-year tenure, the vehicle has flown 53 times with 52 successes, launching a number of payloads for the Shijian, Yaogan, and Ziyuan remote sensing satellite constellations.
Progress MS-31 undergoing processing before launch. (Credit: RSC Rnergia)
The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, is looking to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) with a Progress cargo mission this week. Liftoff from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is set to take place on Thursday, July 3, at 3:32 PM EDT (19:32 UTC), with Progress delivering approximately 2,500 kg of food, water, and equipment for the crew aboard the Station.
The Soyuz rocket will fly on a northeasterly trajectory, placing the Progress MS-31 spacecraft on a trajectory to rendezvous with the ISS. Progress will dock to the Zvezda service module on Saturday, July 5, at around 5:27 PM EDT (21:27 UTC).
The launch of Progress MS-31 will mark the 184th flight of a Progress cargo spacecraft, the sixth launch of a Soyuz rocket in 2025, and the third flight of the 2.1a variant this year. Russia also conducted two Angara launches in March and June, for a total of eight flights this year thus far.
(Lead image: Falcon 9 streaks into the night sky over Florida. Credit: Julia Bergeron for NSF)
