This week, Japanese commercial company Space One stood down two attempts to launch its Kairos vehicle for the second time, while SpaceX has four Falcon 9 launches at the end of the week from Friday onwards. These include customer missions carrying satellites for the 03b mPOWER and GPS-III constellations and another for the National Reconnaissance Office.
This week opened with five launches on the schedule — half of the 11 total orbital launches from an exceptionally busy week before. As the week progressed, additional launches from China included two more towards the very end of the week. These include a Chang Zheng 5B carrying the first batch of satellites for the GuoWang constellation, also known as SatNet.
A record-breaking 14 rocket launches had taken place worldwide in the seven days leading to the launch of a Simorgh rocket on Friday, Dec. 6. These included launches from the U.S., China, Russia, India, French Guiana, and Iran. Six launches were originally expected to take place in one day, Dec. 4, two of which were subsequently moved to later in the week. In total, there were 29 orbital flights in November, averaging almost one per day, and the month closed with a record-breaking 229 orbital launches so far this year worldwide, beating 2023’s record of 221.