We have several exciting launches scheduled for this week. Notable among them are Virgin Galactic’s mission to send astronauts to the edge of space and Russia’s mission to send a craft to the Lunar south pole.
Sunday, 6 August
Rocket Lab will launch one of its Electron rockets carrying the first Acadia series Satellite for Capella Space. The Acadia 1 satellite is a synthetic aperture radar satellite that will capture images of the Earth. The launch will take place at 5:00 a.m. UTC from New Zealand and will be streamed on Rocket Lab’s website.
Monday, 7 August
SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral carrying 22 Starlink satellites to orbit. These satellites provide internet connectivity to people in rural areas. The launch will be streamed on SpaceX’s website. Later in the day, Roscosmos will launch a Soyuz 2.1b rocket carrying the first GLONASS-K2 navigation satellite.
Tuesday, 8 August
China will launch a Long March 2C rocket carrying the Huanjing 2F environmental disaster mitigation satellite. The satellite will be placed into a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 km.
Thursday, 10 August
Virgin Galactic will launch its SpaceShipTwo rocketplane from the VMS Eve carrier aircraft. This mission, known as Galactic 02, will carry a crew of Jon Goodwin, Keisha Schahaff, and Anastatia Mayers.
Roscosmos will also launch a Soyuz 2.1b rocket on this day, but this time it will carry the Luna 25 lander to the Moon. The lander will carry a science payload, including a soil-sampling robotic arm and other hardware.
Friday, 11 August
The final launch of the week will be a Long March 3B/E carrying the Ludi Tance 4A L-SAR satellite. This launch will take place from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre.
In the recap of last week’s launches, Northrop Grumman’s Antares 230+ rocket launched the CRS-19 Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station. SpaceX also launched the Intelsat Galaxy 37 comms satellite, while China launched the FengYun-3F meteorological satellite.
That wraps up this week’s upcoming space launches. Stay tuned for more updates next time!
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