This Week In Launches: Russia to launch its first crewed Soyuz of the year

With ULA sneaking in its first Atlas V launch between issues in this series, the only exciting launch I have to discuss this week is Russia’s crew rotation to the ISS. While it might seem like the only topic, it is indeed a significant event. MS-24, a crewed Soyuz mission, will replace the crew of MS-22, who have been in space for approximately a year.

This Week’s Launches:

• September 12
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Group 7-2, 12:00 A.M. PT
    • SLC-4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California
• September 14
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Group 6-16, 8:45 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
• September 15
  • Roscosmos Soyuz MS-24, 11:44 A.M. ET
    • Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakstan

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MS-22’s relief is on the way

On Friday, two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut are scheduled to launch on the current iteration of one of the oldest operational rocket families, the R7. The other such family is the Atlas, which had its first launch just a few months before the inaugural R7 rocket launch back in 1957. Both of these rocket families are capable of carrying crews, which is quite remarkable, isn’t it?

Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Loral O’Hara will undertake a mission similar to SpaceX’s Crew-7, which began a few weeks ago. They will relieve the crew of MS-22 and embark on a six-month stay in space. However, this crew handover means a little bit more than Crew-7’s, as the MS-22 crew has been in space for nearly a year, a mission that was not originally intended.

MS-22 will actually return to Earth during MS-23 due to a coolant leak caused by a micro-meteorite impact last December. To address the need for a replacement Soyuz capsule, the crew of MS-23 was reassigned to MS-24, while their previous spacecraft served as MS-22’s replacement. Then, MS-22’s mission was extended until September 2023, giving its crew an almost year-long stint in space.

That being said, this marks Russia’s first crewed launch of 2023. While they typically conduct only two to three such launches annually, following the coolant leak incidents on both MS-22 and a subsequent Progress cargo spacecraft, the nation has been relatively quiet regarding any commercial missions using Soyuz rockets.

SpaceX continues on the norm of two launches this week

In no surprise, SpaceX is launching two Starlink missions this week, with one from each coast. It’s nice that SpaceX has maintained a consistent schedule of launching from Florida each week, as I’ve been telling every friend vacationing in the state they will likely get to see a rocket launch.

This launch will be SpaceX’s 65th launch of 2023, the 61st Falcon 9. This achievement sets a record for the company, which had launched 61 rockets in 2022. SpaceX has managed to maintain a launch rate of approximately one launch every four days. While it might not be enough to reach triple-digit launches this year, that rate is getting smaller so they might just squeeze it out.