The Weekly Rocket Report #18
03/17/2025-03/23/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello all, welcome back to The Weekly Rocket Report, let’s waste no time and jump right in!
The week begins in China with a launch of the Ceres 1 rocket early Monday morning. The mission, officially called “Auld Lang Syne” carried 8 satellites to a sun synchronous orbit.
Later Monday night was an Electron launch, named “High Five”. This was the final launch of Rocket Lab’s launch contract with the French satellite company Kineis. The rocket carried the final 5 of the connectivity satellites into orbit after a successful launch from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.
Electron launches “High Five”. Photo Credit: Rocket Lab
Next up, Tuesday afternoon was a launch of Falcon 9, carrying Starlink Group 12-25. Following stage separation, the first stage booster returned to Earth, landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas”. The 23 satellites carried to space were deployed successfully.
After a short break, Falcon 9 took to the skies again early Friday morning. This launch, NROL-57, carried a batch of satellites to orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office. The booster landed back on Earth shortly after launch, returning to Landing Zone 4 at the Vandenberg Space Force Base. Of note, this Falcon Booster broke a record for turnaround time. The time between this launch, and its previous mission (SPHEREx & PUNCH) was just 9 days.
Falcon 9 launches NROL-57. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
The final launch of the week came a few hours later with another launch of Galactic Energy’s Ceres 1 rocket. This mission, called “Vernal Ascent” carried 6 weather satellites, Yunyao 43-18 to sun synchronous orbit.
That’s all for this week folks, already looking forward to another exciting week next week as we should see launches by Electron and Alpha, as well as the inaugural launch of Isar’s Spectrum rocket from the Andoya Space Center. We’ll be back here to cover it all on another weekly installment of 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)