Launch Roundup: New Glenn and Starship headline a week dominated by SpaceX missions

Date:
Mon, 13 Jan 2025 23:20:09 +0000

Description:
SpaceX dominates this weeks launch manifest with three Falcon 9 missions and the seventh flight The post Launch Roundup: New Glenn and Starship headline a week dominated by SpaceX missions appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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SpaceX dominates this weeks launch manifest with three Falcon 9 missions and the seventh flight of its Starship rocket. The three Falcon 9 missions will see the launches of a batch of Starlink satellites, a Transporter rideshare mission, and two Moon landers.

Blue Origins New Glenn looks to make another launch attempt this week following the scrub of its maiden flight attempt on Monday. No official details have been published other than noting that an unspecified technical issue with the vehicle caused the scrub during Mondays attempt.



New Glenn | Blue Ring Pathfinder

Blue Origin is set to make a second launch attempt of its New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday, Jan. 14, within a launch window that opens at 1:00 AM EST (06:00 UTC) and extends to 4:00 AM EST
(09:00 UTC).

New Glenn will carry the DarkSky-1 Blue Ring Pathfinder, a prototype of Blue Origins Blue Ring platform. The Blue Ring platform is designed to refuel satellites, transport them to different orbits, and host payloads. It can
also act as a satellite bus or a space tug and is launch vehicle agnostic, though New Glenn is expected to fly Blue Ring missions in the future.



The 57 m tall booster stage, Glenn Stage 1 (GS1), known as So Youre Telling Me Theres a Chance, or GS1-SN001, will attempt to land on Blue Origins
Landing Platform Vessel 1 (LPV1) named Jacklyn after Jeff Bezos mother. The GS1 stage, equipped with seven BE-4 engines using methane and liquid oxygen
as propellants, will use all seven engines during launch and up to three during landing. The stage will also use fins and thrusters to guide its path to Jacklyn , which will be out in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.

The 23 m tall Glenn Stage 2 (GS2), equipped with two BE-3U engines using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants, will send the Blue Ring prototype into a medium-Earth orbit (MEO). GS2 is not reusable, though Blue Origin has worked on a project called Jarvis in the past that was a concept
to enable full reuse of both stages of the vehicle.

This flight was originally scheduled for October 2024 with NASAs ESCAPADE
Mars payload, but New Glenn was not expected to be ready for its maiden
flight by October. The ESCAPADE flight has since been moved to a later date, and the results of this flight will determine the cadence Blue Origin
achieves with New Glenn in 2025.

New Glenn, capable of launching up to 45,000 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO), has contracts for Kuiper, Telesat, and OneWeb constellation launches and several geostationary communication satellites from various customers. Blue Origin hopes to use New Glenn to launch national security payloads and this flight will serve as a certification flight for this purpose.

Blue Origin plans to use New Glenn to launch its Orbital Reef space station and Blue Moon lander while being able to reuse individual GS1 stages up to 25 times, and later, 100 times, to lower launch costs. The company hopes to be competitive with SpaceX in the worldwide launch market while working toward a future where millions of people live and work in space.



Falcon 9 | Transporter 12

The first of SpaceXs regular Transporter rideshare missions for 2025 is targeting launch on Tuesday, Jan. 14, at 10:49 AM PST (18:49 UTC), at the start of a 57-minute launch window.

Lifting off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California, Falcon 9 will fly on a southern trajectory
to place the payloads into a Sun-synchronous orbit. Two separate deployments of multiple payloads will be made at altitudes of 520 km and 590 km.

The booster supporting this mission is not yet known but is expected to perform a return-to-launch-site landing just south of SLC-4E at Landing Zone
4 (LZ-4).

Falcon 9 is a 3.9 m diameter, 70 m high high two-stage rocket. Nine Merlin 1D engines power the first stage booster, while the second stage utilizes a single vacuum-optimized Merlin engine. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the
first and only reusable orbital rockets in service today, with one Falcon booster (B1067) having flown 25 flights. The two payload fairings are also recovered and reused after flight. Buckle up! Our road trip to the Moon is
set to launch at 1:11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 15, on a @SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. From liftoff to landing, here's the rundown of Blue Ghost's 60-day lunar mission, including 45 days traveling to the Moon and 14 days of surface operations. pic.twitter.com/n4cUJWEi2x

Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) January 7, 2025



Falcon 9 | Blue Ghost Mission 1 and HAKUTO-R M2

On Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 1:11:24 AM EST (06:11:24 UTC), a SpaceX Falcon 9 will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the Blue Ghost and HAKUTO-R M2 lunar landers. Launch is targeted for just five minutes into a 39-minute launch window. The booster and
recovery assets supporting this mission are not yet known.

Firefly Aerospaces Blue Ghost lander is being flown as part of NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. This initiative, which
is a key part of NASAs Artemis program, involves securing the services of commercial partners to land science and technology payloads on the lunar surface quickly. Firefly Aerospace will be responsible for end-to-end
delivery services, including payload integration, launch from Earth, landing on the Moon, and mission operations. This is the sixth award for lunar
surface delivery under the CLPS initiative.

Blue Ghost will be the first of the two landers to deploy from Falcon 9, staying in Earth orbit for 16 days before continuing its journey to the Moon. Once at the Moon, Blue Ghost will enter lunar orbit for a further 16 days before descending to the surface and landing at Mare Crisium, a low-lying basin on the Moons near side.

Blue Ghost is expected to operate for a full lunar day (14 Earth days),
though teams hope that some systems may survive the extreme cold of the lunar night. We're less than 2 days from @Firefly_Space 's Blue Ghost Mission 1, which is carrying several @NASA payloads onboard, a number of which will be studying the lunar regolith and how it interacts with various materials.

I asked how the data collected on this mission will be shared, pic.twitter.com/2xhSdhk3FS

Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) January 13, 2025



The second payload aboard Falcon 9 is ispaces HAKUTO-R M2 Resilience lander, which is also carrying the Tenacious micro rover. This will be the second HAKUTO-R mission, the first of which crashed on the Moon in 2023 during a landing attempt.

After deploying Blue Ghost, the Falcon 9 second stage will perform a further burn, providing HAKUTO-R with an additional impulse to propel it toward the Moon. Following deployment, the spacecraft will be commissioned and perform a short burn while remaining in Earth orbit. The burn will confirm that the thrusters operate correctly and provide any required course correction.

HAKUTO-R Resilience will use the Moons gravity to perform a low-energy transfer into a 100 km circular lunar orbit. This flight path will take
longer to reach the Moon but requires less fuel and allows for additional payloads to be carried. Adopting this strategy means that it will be some months before the spacecraft attempts a landing on the lunar surface in the Mare Frigoris region in the Moons northern hemisphere.

Once landed on the lunar surface, Resilience will deploy Tenacious using an arm. The rover will then perform a series of operations, including collecting a lunar regolith sample to fulfill part of ispaces contract with NASA.



Starship | Flight 7

The Starship program, fresh off four flights in 2024, is preparing for its first flight of 2025. Starship Flight 7, another suborbital flight at a
nearly orbital velocity, is scheduled to launch from Pad A at Starbase,
Texas, on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 4:00 PM CST (22:00 UTC). Liftoff is
currently set for the start of a 98-minute window that ends at 5:38 PM CST (23:38 UTC).

Flight 7, using Booster 14 and Ship 33, will see Starship fly eastward over the Gulf of Mexico out of Starbase. Booster 14 will attempt a catch at Pad A, flying a precise trajectory that will allow it to be captured by the Mechazilla chopstick arms on the launch tower. A booster catch attempt succeeded on Flight 5 but was waved off during Flight 6 due to issues with ground equipment.

Once Ship 33 reaches its intended suborbital trajectory, its tasks will include another in-space restart of a Raptor engine and a deployment of ten simulated Starlink v3 satellites from its payload bay. The deployment will
use a PEZ dispenser to jettison the dummy satellites in succession, and these payloads will enter the atmosphere using the same suborbital trajectory as Ship 33. Now targeting Wednesday, January 15 for the seventh flight test of Starship https://t.co/QNCSPTdYW2 pic.twitter.com/xz8eNkfV0T

SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 12, 2025



Ship 33 will reenter similarly to earlier flights before splashing down in
the Indian Ocean. Liftoff is timed to enable a daylight reentry and ocean landing of Ship 33, and many additional cameras and sensors will be installed on the launch vehicle to provide additional views and data. Ship 33 is the first Block 2 Starship, with modifications to the fins, heat shield, and
more.

If schedules hold, Flight 7 will be SpaceXs sixth launch of the year. The company plans to fly up to 25 Starship missions this year. As Starship is a new system, and the second launch pad at Starbase is still some time away
from completion, SpaceXs cadence goal for Starship in 2025 is very ambitious. However, the Starship program will likely exceed last years totals and achievements.

Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 11-8

Falcon 9 is set to launch a batch of Starlink satellites for the Starlink Group 11-8 mission on Friday, Jan. 17, at 7:18 PM PST (Saturday, Jan. 18, at 03:18 UTC) from SLC-4E at VSFB, the second launch from this pad this week.
The launch window will remain open until 11:49 PM PST (07:49 UTC).

Falcon 9 will fly a southeasterly trajectory to insert the batch of v2-Mini satellites into LEO. The unknown booster will land atop SpaceXs west coast autonomous droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be stationed downrange in the Pacific.

(Lead image: Ship 33 sits stop Booster 14 before launch. Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)



The post Launch Roundup: New Glenn and Starship headline a week dominated by SpaceX missions appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/01/launch-roundup-011325/


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