The Weekly Rocket Report #14
02/17/2025-02/23/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s installment of the Weekly Rocket Report! We’re going to jump straight into the week without delay:
The week began Tuesday at 6:17PM (EST) with a launch of Electron on the mission “Fasten Your Space Belts”. The rocket, launched from New Zealand was carrying an imaging satellite for Black Sky Technology.
Electron launches Fasten Your Space Belts. Photo Credit: Rocket Lab.
The next rocket was launched just 4 short minutes from Electron at 6:21PM (EST). This launch was a Falcon 9 carrying 23 payloads on the Starlink 10-12 mission. The booster landed on the drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” in the waters off the coast of the Bahamas, a first for Falcon and for SpaceX.
Falcon 9 booster landed on the Drone Ship “Just Read the Instructions” in the Bahamas following the successful launch of Starlink Group 10-12. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
Moving on to Friday we had another Starlink launch, this time Group 12-14 from the Cape. The 23 satellites were put into low earth orbit and the booster successfully landed down range on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas”.
Next, we jump across the Pacific to China, where there was a launch early Saturday morning. A Long March 3B/E took ChinaSat 10R, a communication satellite to orbit.
We finish off the week, as we often do, with Falcon 9 launching a Starlink Mission. This mission, Starlink Group 15-1 saw 22 satellites launched to space, and the booster landed back downrange on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
That’s it for this week everyone, another relatively quiet week, though it is good to see Electron keeping a strong cadence. Next week we have been shown a potential Starship launch, so here’s hoping that holds up. Hopefully we will be discussing it all next week on the Weekly Rocket Report!
As always feel free to write to me at rickyew2112@gmail.com, or find me on X @Rickyew2112
Sic Itur Ad Astra
(Thus They Journey to the Stars)