The week of Sept. 18 through Sept. 24 is set to see four orbital launches, all but one of which are set to take place from US-based aerospace companies. Firstly, Rocket Lab launched its ninth Electron of 2023 on a mission dubbed “We Will Never Desert You.” However, the mission suffered a failure during staging.
Later, SpaceX launched its Starlink Group 6-17 mission from Space Launch Complex (SLC-40). Later in the week, SLC-40 saw the launch of yet another Starlink mission, dubbed Starlink Group 6-18. In between these missions was the launch of a Ceres-1 rocket, from China, which also suffered an anomaly at a currently unknown phase of flight.
These missions marked the 152nd through 155th launches of 2023; at this pace, the world is on track for over 210 launches by the end of the year, which will mark a new record. SpaceX has made up over 40% of these launches, with these two Falcon launches being its 66th and 67th Falcon flights of 2023.
Early on Sept. 25, SpaceX launched its third Starlink mission in a seven-day period. Starlink Group 7-3 launched on Monday, at 00:23 AM PDT (07:23 UTC).