This Week in Launch: Ireland’s first satellite tags along with South Korean reconnaissance payload

This week we are only seeing two launches and both are from SpaceX. The obligatory SLC-40 Starlink launch and a fun little RTLS launch out of Vandenberg. By “fun little” I mean a reconnaissance satellite for the South Korean government. That mission however is also launching the first satellite for the nation of Ireland.

This week’s launches:

• November 27
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Group 6-30, 11:00 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
• November 29
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 425 Project Flight 1, 10:04 A.M. PT
    • SLC-4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California

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Top spaceflight news this week

• Elon Musk thinks the next Starship’s flight hardware will be ready in ‘3-4 weeks’
• Elon Musk shares that a new version of Starship is coming soon
• NASA still hoping to launch Mars mission on first New Glenn rocket next year
• Starliner’s April launch date comes down to a January drop test

SpaceX to launch first of five South Korean satellites

South Korea, a country whose only land boarder is shared with its adversary for the last seven plus decades, North Korea, is launching brand new reconnaissance satellites with SpaceX. 425 Project Flight 1 is the first flight, hence the name, of five satellites that South Korea will use to monitor its neighbors nuclear capabilities.

North Korea just recently succeeded in launching its first reconnaissance satellite into orbit last week. Allowing it now to spy on its neighbors from above, although South Korea claims its technology isn’t capable of doing much just yet.

With the North’s growing capability in its orbital rocket technology and expansion of Chinas influence in the region, the South’s increase need for synthetic aperture radar tech over its neighbors is warranted.

This flight will launch from SpaceX’s West Coast launch site in California and feature a RTLS landing. SLC-4E‘s RTLS landing are the closes we get to a true Return To Launch Site landing as LZ-4 is located right next door at SLC-4W.

Even though this is a sensitive mission for South Korea, SpaceX is able to offer a rideshare mission along side it. EIRSAT-1 will be Ireland’s first satellite and was built by University College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast. The 2U CubeSat will carry a gamma-ray detector and an experiment of different thermal coatings for future spacecraft.