This Week in Launch: Super Thursday? Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Russia, and China prepare for launches on the same day

On Thursday of this week we have a total of four planned launches from around the world from the biggest players in the space launch market. They include Rocket Lab’s first LC-2 mission in 2024, a crew rotation to the ISS by Russia, and a cargo resupply mission to the ISS by SpaceX.

This week’s launches:

• March 18 (Monday)
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-16 | 7:28 P.M. PT
    • SLC-4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California
• March 19 (Tuesday)
  • CASC | Long March 8 | Queqiao-2 | 8:31 P.M. ET
    • LC-201, Wenchang Space Launch Site, China
• March 21 (Thursday)
  • CASC | Long March 2D | Unknown Payload | 1:35 A.M. ET
    • SLS-2, Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China
  • Rocket Lab | Electron | Live and Let Fly | 2:15 A.M. ET
    • LC-2, Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia
  • Roscosmos | Soyuz 2.1a | MS-25 | 9:21 A.M. ET
    • Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | CRS-30 | 4:55 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
  • March 22 (Friday)
    • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-42 | 7:55 P.M. ET
      • LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

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Russia set to launch next crewed flight to the ISS

Thursday morning in the Western World, Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, will launch a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS with three passengers inside it. One will be NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson who will begin a six month stay on the station and relieve Loral O’Hara, who arrived at the ISS last September.

The other passengers, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and Belarusian cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya, will only stay for a few weeks and return on the MS-24 spacecraft already docked to the ISS. Vasilevskaya will become the first woman from Belarus to fly to space, beating out six other woman in a competition for the honor.

Like all missions to the ISS, NASA plans to provide coverage of the event through its streaming service and social media pages.

Rocket Lab’s first LC-2 flight of the year

A few hours before Russian attempts its Soyuz launch, Rocket Lab will have already or attempted to launch its first Electron from LC-2 in 2024.

This mission will be for the National Reconnaissance Office and officially designated NROL-123. The mission will carry three payloads on a dedicated mission to orbit but outside of that, we don’t know much. The only other information we can decipher from NRO’s press kit is that the payloads are small (hence the flight on Electron) and at least one will use new technology.

The last time Rocket Lab used its US based launch site was in June of 2023 when it performed its first HASTE sub-orbital test mission. For the most part, Rocket Lab sticks to launches out of its private spaceport in New Zealand. Specifically LC-1B, for some reason LC-1A (Electron’s original launch pad) hasn’t seen a launch since mid-2022.

Rocket Lab usually streams its launches on its YouTube channel. However, since this for the NRO, views from the second stage are usually not shown and coverage is rather short.