During the last full week of April, planned launches include two Starlink missions and another Falcon 9 flight lifting customer satellites. The first Starlink mission of the week saw another milestone reached with the 300th landing of a Falcon 9 booster on the Group 6-53 mission. The delayed WorldView Legion 1 & 2 mission, which was originally due to fly last week and was rescheduled into this week’s plans, has since slipped out of the current schedule.
The fifth Electron to launch this year carried two demonstration missions into two notably different orbits on Wednesday. One of the two demonstrations being hoisted by Rocket Lab was a demonstration of a novel solar sail developed by NASA and powered by the pressure of sunlight acting upon the surface of the sail.
The week also delivered a crewed launch on Thursday when the Shenzhou 18 mission sent three more taikonauts to the Tianhe core module of China’s Tiangong space station.