China

It will be a quiet launch week with only two days seeing orbital launches from China, Japan, and of course, SpaceX. The biggest story of the last week was with NASA; it received a nomination for the next NASA Administrator, then the outgoing Administrator announced the delay of the Artemis 2 and 3 missions.

Welcome back to another edition of Terminal Count. Starship has continued to command the news cycle even after its launch last month. That will likely not change for the foreseeable future; however, NASA’s Artemis 2 mission is entering the chat with the start of SLS stacking.

SpaceX is making its quickest turnaround yet for the Starship rocket, hopefully launching some five weeks after Flight 5. This mission will have more big milestones for the company while other companies still work towards competing with its older Falcon 9 rocket.

New photos and planning documents show potential Starship-sized expansions at SpaceX‘s Roberts Road facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The company is also planning four Falcon 9 launches this week. Meanwhile, its closest thing to a near-term competitor, Blue Origin, is gearing up to debut its New Glenn rocket.

This week, SpaceX hit its first triple-digit launch year and continues to extend that number in the remaining months of 2024. Blue Origin might finally get its NS-27 mission off the ground to certify its new New Shepard rocket. Finally, NASA’s Artemis program is once again under fire for being behind schedule and so much… so much… over budget.

This week SpaceX returns with the FAA‘s okay to resume launches, starting with ESA‘s Hera mission to the asteroid Didymos. Late-week weather around the Florida Peninsula will, however, likely delay several missions the company has.

China is leading this week in launches, but SpaceX is set (already has by publishing this) to launch yet another major ESA mission over using domestic options. Rocket Lab will also make a showing this week with a… family-specific mission name.

This week will be another week of Starlink launches from SpaceX after a short break from the company to launch some missions commercially, how nice of them. With that, according to the current launch manifest, two Starlink missions are scheduled to lift off from the same launch pad in less than three days.

On August 6, China launched a Long March 6A rocket, which successfully deployed 18 satellites as part of the country’s “Thousand Sails” megaconstellation project. However, shortly after completing its mission, the rocket’s upper stage experienced an anomaly that led to a significant debris event. 

This week SpaceX is looking at launching three Falcon 9 rockets, two of those will be for the company’s Starlink constellation. Another payload is a multi-payload satellite that will host missions for the Space Force, Norwegian’s Ministry of Defense, and ViaSat.

On this quiet holiday week, China will actually be launching more than SpaceX, and even on Fourth of July (how rude). However, we do finally get to see Firefly return to the launch site after December’s partial failure of its Alpha rocket – scheduled for late Monday evening.

This week, two rockets returning to the launch pad after over six months. First will be SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, launching NOAA’s GOES-U weather satellite, and Firefly’s Alpha, launching CatSat, and many others, a 6U CubeSat built by students from the University of Arizona.

An honorable mention, Japan’s H3 rocket will launch for the third time, its second of the year.

This week is a big week for Rocket Lab as it plans to launch its 50th Electron rocket, faster than any other company to date. SpaceX will also have a double header on Tuesday with a third mission on Thursday.

Alongside possibly two other missions, SpaceX is launching a science mission co-sponsored by ESA and JAXA, beating both agencies home-built rockets. This week we’ll also see a resupply mission to the ISS by Russia and two mysterious launches from a Chinese company within a few days of each other.

For the fourth time, Boeing’s Starliner CFT makes an appearance as it struggles with leakage and propellent issues in the spacecraft’s service module.

This week will be the third week in a row the headline launch is supposed to be Boeing’s Starliner Crewed Flight Test. SpaceX is also planning another banger of a week with three launches and Rocket Lab shows up again.

After a long road of delays, technical failures, and two inflight tests, Boeing‘s Starliner is finally at the pad and ready to launch later today. The mission will be a major milestone for Boeing, who is desperate for a win right now, but it might show that the world has moved on from legacy providers.

This week SpaceX will attempt another three launch week, with two of those mission scheduled from the West Coast. The headline mission for the week will actually come out of China, a Long March 5 rocket is scheduled to liftoff Friday with the country’s next lunar sample return mission, this time from the far side of the Moon.

This week we’re looking to be a rather busy one with a launch everyday from either SpaceX, China, and Rocket Lab up to Friday. China will be launching its next crew rotation to their space station and SpaceX might have a four launch week.

This week SpaceX will be launching as many as four Falcon 9s, mostly for its internal programs like Starlink. One, however, will be for its rideshare program with a new name, Bandwagon. Although Monday’s Starlink mission out of California has potential to be an amazing twilight launch for local residents.

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.

After a few weeks of featuring at least one big name launch that makes writing these articles easy, we’re back to more standard communication satellites. Two launches from SpaceX are on the schedule with a third possible over the weekend. China, not to be left out is also scheduled for a Long March 5 with an unknown payload on top.