The Weekly Rocket Report
01/13/2025-01/19/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Weekly Rocket Report! We had a very exciting week last week so I will waste no time in jumping right in:
Before we get into all of the major launches, we first have to talk about a Starlink launch! Starlink Group 12-4 took off from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Monday morning, riding a Falcon 9 rocket to space. The booster landed downrange on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” and the 21 satellites were placed in low earth orbit.
Next on the docket was another Falcon 9 launch. This time the mission was Transporter 12, lifting off from SLC-4E at Vandenberg. The mission is part of a program by SpaceX to cram a large number of payloads into the same rocket, making the cost to each individual payload far cheaper than it would be if they launched on their own. This particular mission vaulted 131 individual payloads into space. The rocket’s booster landed back on earth at Landing Zone Four.
Early Wednesday morning saw a 3rd Falcon 9 of the week lift off, this time with 2 very special payloads, lunar landers. The first of these is the Blue Ghost lander, built by Firefly Aerospace. The craft is bound for Mare Crisium on the surface of the moon, and carries numerous smaller payloads as part of NASA’s CLPS program. The second lander, built by the Japanese company iSpace, was called HAKUTO-R M2, “Resilience”. If you’re wondering about the name, this is in fact the second HAKUTO-R mission, the first of which failed. It was launched in December of 2022, and fun fact, I was there in person to see it! For more information on the Blue Ghost lander check out this article: https://www.theweeklyspaceman.com/articles/what-is-firefly-aerospaces-blue-ghost-mission
Falcon 9 launches Blue Ghost Mission 1 and HAKUTO-R M2 “Resilience”. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
Now, after many years of waiting, the world got to see the maiden launch of the New Glenn rocket! The large rocket, built by Blue Origin, blasted off in the early morning hours of Thursday. The rocket successfully reached orbit, and tested a pathfinder of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring program. However the first stage, designed to land on a drone ship and be brought back for re-use, similar to Falcon 9, failed. The first stage was heading back down to earth following staging but at some point all telemetry was lost, leading mission control to believe that the booster had completely missed its landing target. Going for a landing on the first flight was ambitious, and I expect that we will see New Glenn landings in the future. You can read a Pre-Launch article about New Glenn here: https://www.theweeklyspaceman.com/articles/new-glenn-flight-one-the-ultimate-overview
New Glenn launches Blue Ring Pathfinder (Maiden Flight). Photo Credit: Blue Origin.
Thursday afternoon saw more excitement with the 7th launch of SpaceX’s Starship. This was the first launch of the Block II upper stage, while the first stage remained a Stage I. Following hot staging the super heavy booster returned and was successfully caught by the large chopstick arms on the launch tower. Following this excitement however there was bad news as it was quickly noticed that telemetry on the second stage had been lost. Not long later videos emerged from Turks and Caicos showed a brilliant display of fireballs streaking across the sky, indicating that the upper stage had in fact broken apart. It was later announced that the preliminary indication was that a fire in the engine bay, causing engines to shut down and eventually leading to the total loss of the vehicle. For more on Starship Flight 7 by the TWS crew see here: https://www.theweeklyspaceman.com/articles/flight-7-failure-starship-has-failed
Starship’s Super Heavy Booster returns to and is successfully caught by the launch tower’s chopsticks during the vehicle’s 7th test flight. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
The final launch of the week occurred later Thursday night in China. A Long March 2D flew 3 satellites into orbit. The main payload, PRSC-EO1, is an Earth observation satellite developed by SUPARCO, the space agency of Pakistan.
Wow, what a week. If you’re anything like me, you came out of the week very tired, staying up for an after 1AM EST lunar lander launch, and multiple after 2AM New Glenn attempts, while still waking up at 6:30AM for work. Such is the life of a space nerd. Anywho, I hope everyone enjoys their week and I will see you back here next week for another 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)