This Week In Launches: Virgin Galactic launches for another month, SpaceX cargo mission this weekend

This week Virgin Galactic is returning for its six flight within six months. Galactic 5 will be one of many launches happening this week, two others from China and possibly three from SpaceX.

This week’s launches:

• October 30
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Group 6-25, 7:20 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
• October 31
  • CASC Long March 4C Unknown Payload, 7:05 P.M. ET
    • LC-9, Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China
• November 2
  • Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Galactic 05, TBD
    • VMS Eve, Spaceport America, Nevada
• November 3
  • CASC Long March 7A Unknown Payload, 11:00 A.M. ET
    • LC-201, Wenchang Satellite Launch Site, China
  • SpaceX Falcon 9, Starlink Group 6-26, 6:37 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
• November 5
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-29, 10:01 P.M. ET (Now the 7th)
    • LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Virgin Galactic launching second research flight

The window for Virgin Galactic’s next flights opens up this Thursday, November 2. This will be the company’s six month in a row it has flown its VSS Unity spaceplane, fifth in a row with paying customers. The company still has many hundreds more to go before it runs out of customers so we should get use to this sort of cadence.

This flight will be similar to Virgin Galactic’s first customer flight back in June. Rather than flying the ultra wealthy on a joyride to space and back, this flight will feature researchers. The four rear seats of VSS Unity will be taken up by one Virgin Galactic trainer, two US researchers, and a private astronaut from Franco-Italian nationality. We still don’t know the mission of the unnamed customer.

This flight won’t be livestream, something we’ve become normal to from Virgin Galactic now. However, the company still plans to provide updates via X (formally Twitter) on launch day.

SpaceX’s weekend includes RTLS landing

This week SpaceX plans to launch three flights all from Florida. This will certainly help increase their chances to hit that 100 launch goal for 2023. Two of those launches will take place towards the end of the week, Friday night and Sunday night. The latter will also get the rare RTLS landing back at LZ-1.

While the first two flights will be rather normal Starlink launches, as normal as a rocket launch can be. The last one will be for NASA, CRS-29, an uncrewed resupply flight to the International Space Station. Launching late Sunday night, a new addition to these flights will be returning the booster back on land instead of landing on a drone ship at sea.

SpaceX reintroduced RTLS landings this year after creating a flight profile that allowed the Dragon 2 spacecraft to reach its required orbit, but also allowing enough fuel to return to land. RTLS landings are preferred for less risk of losing the the booster and allowing for faster refurbishment.

SpaceX use to fly RTLS landings for all cargo Dragon flights but ended it when introducing the Dragon 2 spacecraft. Now SpaceX can perform these landings on both cargo and crewed flights.