US and China Lead Launch Surge in Second Half of 2024
Moving into the second half of 2024, the first week of July has already begun with the third launch of the Japanese H3 rocket in the early hours of Monday morning UTC. The week ahead continues with two Starlink missions from SpaceX, pushing the number of Starlink satellites launched to over 6,700. Two more launches are due from China with the first flight of the year for i-Space’s Hyperbola-1, moved now to Friday, and another mission on a Chang Zheng 6A. SpaceX is also preparing to launch the first communication satellite built in Turkey this coming Monday.
The fifth flight of Firefly’s Alpha launch vehicle was scheduled for the night of Tuesday, July 2, from Vandenberg Space Force Base, but that date has now been postponed.
Firefly announced a partnership with the Swedish Space Corporation last week to jointly launch satellites from the recently inaugurated Esrange Space Center in Sweden, targeting a first launch in 2026. The FAA also added Firefly’s vehicles to its Space Data Integrator last week, tracking them in near-real time during launch operations.
The week’s first Starlink mission is scheduled to launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday, July 3 at 2:57 AM EDT (06:57 UTC). With this mission, the company will have launched over 6,700 Starlink satellites to date. At the start of this week, SpaceX had launched 6,698, of which 477 had re-entered, and 5,232 had moved into their operational orbit. The company added Madagascar to the long list of over 100 countries now able to access the high-speed, low-latency internet service last week.
A Chang Zheng 6A is scheduled to launch from LC-9A at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China on Thursday, July 4 at 23:00 UTC. This will be the third launch for this two-stage vehicle type which has been active since 2022 and is capable of lifting 5,000 kg to orbit, assisted by four side boosters. The single-stick CZ-6C variant made its debut this May.
A launch is expected from Site 95A at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on Friday, July 5 at 23:40 UTC. The Hyperbola-1, also known locally as the Shuang Quxian-1 or SQX-1, is a four-stage solid-fuel powered rocket, guided by liquid-propellant attitude control engines. This will be the seventh flight to date for this vehicle type.
A second Starlink mission is scheduled for the week, launching from SLC-4E at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Saturday, July 6 at 8:33 PM PDT (03:33 UTC on July 7).
The launch of the first large communications satellite built in Turkey is scheduled for Monday, July 8 at 5:20 PM EDT (21:20 UTC) from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Massing approximately 4,250 kg with onboard propellant, the satellite is equipped with 20 Ku-band and 3 X-band transponders. It will provide data relay for commercial, civil government, and military communications over Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia.
This week marks the first anniversary since the final flight of an Ariane 5. Its successor, the Ariane 6, now stands ready for its maiden launch next week. Another new vehicle, Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3, which has been expected to make its maiden launch later this year, suffered a setback on Sunday. During a static fire test, the first stage of the rocket, which uses kerosene and liquid oxygen as propellants, unexpectedly took flight and was destroyed after several seconds, falling 1.5 km away.
The company reported a structural failure in the connection between the rocket and the test stand. Still in development, this Chinese vehicle is similar in height and approach to the Falcon 9 with a reusable first stage. Wow. This is apparently what was supposed to be a STATIC FIRE TEST today of a Tianlong-3 first stage by China’s Space Pioneer. That is catastrophic, not static. Firm was targeting an orbital launch in the coming months.
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The first half of the year saw 124 orbital launch attempts in total, with only a few failures, carrying 14 crew and over 1330 payloads into orbit. The US and China accounted for 81% of the launches over those six months, with 57% and 24% shares respectively. SpaceX was responsible for over half of all orbital launches with 54%. The only other launches flying from the US in the first half of the year were:
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For comparison, just two years ago this same number of launches was only reached with the last launch of September, and the count was at 75 by this midway point of the year. One year ago the industry had yet to pass the 100 mark, with 98 orbital launches by the end of June. With weather slowing launches recently, and 67 missions under its belt so far, SpaceX is not yet at the halfway mark for its ambitious goal of 148 launches in 2024. There is still time to reach that mark if the company returns to the launch cadence shown in May, with 14 flights in the month, based on local time.