It’s a busy week in spaceflight, especially for Russia. The week of Aug. 7 following through to Aug. 13 has seen Russia launch two missions to space, including the nation’s fourth-generation radio navigation satellite, GLONASS-K2, and Roscosmos’s first mission to the Moon in over four decades, dubbed Luna 25.
SpaceX launched a batch of its Starlink v2 Minis into low-Earth orbit (LEO), and another on Thursday night. What’s more, China launched another unknown payload into space.
Lastly, Virgin Galactic completed the second of its previously announced human spaceflight missions, Galactic 02, which sent three fully private tourists to the edge of space. With this week’s launches now complete, the total number of orbital launch attempts in 2023 has increased to 123.