Launch Roundup: Atlas V, Electron, and Falcon 9 missions scheduled for this week

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As July turns into August, launch activity will pick up after Falcon 9’s return to flight. Besides the Falcon 9, ULA’s Atlas V and Rocket Lab’s Electron are also being prepared to fly missions to orbit. The USSF-51 flight from Florida and “Owl for One, One for Owl” from New Zealand will be followed by Starlink 10-6 and CRS NG-21 aboard Falcon 9 vehicles from Florida.

After just six flights in July due to the Starlink 9-3 failure, SpaceX hopes to return to its industry-leading flight cadence with two flights in the first three days of August. Although its goal of 148 flights in 2024 might be out of reach, requiring 15 launches per month for the rest of the year, the company still expects to beat 2023’s record of flights handily, while Electron is approaching double-digit flights this year itself.

ULA Atlas V | USSF-51

A ULA Atlas V 551, AV-101, successfully lifted off from Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) on Tuesday, July 30 carrying the USSF-51 payload for the US Space Force. Launch occurred at the start of the five-hour launch window, which lasted from 6:45 AM EDT (10:45 UTC) to 11:45 AM EDT (15:45 UTC).

The USSF-51 payload had been scheduled to fly aboard a Vulcan Centaur rocket but had been changed to the Atlas V as per ULA’s request. Although the Vulcan started 2024 with a successful first flight, another flight is needed to certify that system to fly national security payloads. This flight will use an eastbound trajectory, which is typically used by satellites bound for geosynchronous orbit.

This flight is only the second Atlas V 551 launch of 2024 and the fourth launch for ULA, which is also planning a certification flight for Vulcan later this year. The USSF-51 flight marks the 100th national security mission flown by ULA during its 18-year existence, using Delta II, Delta IV, and Atlas V family rockets. This flight will be the last-ever national security launch for the Atlas family.

The 551 model of the Atlas V, the most powerful of the Atlas V family, features a five-meter fairing, five solid rocket boosters, and the single-engine Centaur upper stage. After USSF-51, there are just nine remaining 551 model flights, all but one of which are to launch Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon. The remainder of the Atlas V flight manifest is to fly six operational Starliner missions to the International Space Station.

The “Owl for One, One for Owl” mission patch. (Credit: Rocket Lab)

Rocket Lab Electron | Owl for One, One for Owl

With a currently unknown launch date, Rocket Lab will launch the “Owl for One, One for Owl” mission from its private launch pad and range on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, with a Synspective satellite on board. The flight is scheduled for liftoff from one of the two pads at LC-1, and will be launching its fifth StriX satellite for the Japanese earth observation company. No recovery attempt has been stated for this vehicle, though some Electron flights have tested recovery capability for the first stage.

The Electron rocket will be carrying the StriX constellation satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit, and the kick stage will conduct a maneuver during the mid-mission phase to protect the satellite from solar radiation. The StriX satellites use synthetic aperture radar to observe the Earth’s surface even through clouds and under day and night conditions, and these satellites are designed to detect millimeter-level changes to the Earth’s surface.

This is the first of two planned StriX launches for Synspective, and Rocket Lab has already flown five Synspective satellites into orbit. This flight is the 51st overall launch for Rocket Lab and the ninth of 2024 for the company, which had stated an objective of launching up to two dozen flights this year. A flight for Capella Space was supposed to be Electron’s ninth flight of 2024 but the customer requested a delay so the Synspective flight became the next one for Rocket Lab.

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Starlink v2 Mini satellites prior to encapsulation. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-6

Starlink 10-6 is scheduled to fly on Friday, Aug. 2 during a four-hour, 43-minute window from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. This window starts at 12:19 AM EDT (04:19 UTC) and ends at 5:02 AM EDT (09:02 UTC). A batch of Starlink v2 Mini satellites is to be flown on a northeast trajectory, as has been the usual practice with many Starlink flights from Florida this year.

The booster for this flight is not currently known, nor is the drone ship that is scheduled to conduct recovery operations. However, with A Shortfall of Gravitas supporting the Starlink 10-4 recovery, it is likely that Just Read the Instructions will be the marine asset to support this booster’s landing. The drone ship will be stationed in the Atlantic off of the Carolinas for this flight.

Starlink 10-6 will be the 73rd Falcon 9 and 74th Falcon family launch of 2024 if the current schedule holds. This flight will also be the first launch of August for SpaceX as the company prepares to convert Pad 39A to support the Crew-9 flight set to fly as early as Aug. 18. Because 39A will need to support Crew-9 and Polaris Dawn, SLC-40 at CCSFS and SLC-4E in California will be supporting most of the Falcon 9 manifest this month.

Cygnus NG-21 mission patch. (Credit: Northrop Grumman)

SpaceX Falcon 9 | CRS NG-21

The second Falcon 9 flight scheduled for this week is a cargo mission to the ISS, only not involving SpaceX’s own Cargo Dragon spacecraft. Northrop Grumman has purchased three launches from SpaceX to support its Cygnus cargo operations while the Antares 330 is in development.

The Cygnus cargo ship S.S. Francis R. “Dick” Scobee, named after the commander of the ill-fated STS-51L Space Shuttle mission in 1986, is scheduled to fly on the second of the three launches that Northrop Grumman has purchased. The launch is set for Saturday, Aug. 3 at 11:28 AM EDT (15:28 UTC) from SLC-40 at CCSFS, and the Falcon 9 will launch on a northeast trajectory inclined at 51.64 degrees to the Equator to match the Station’s orbit around Earth. The booster for this launch is not currently known, but it will conduct a return-to-launch site maneuver for a landing at the LZ-1 pad at CCSFS.

Photo of STS-41C pilot and STS-51L commander Dick Scobee. (Credit: NASA)

The NG-21 spacecraft, loaded with 3,750 kilograms of supplies and experiments for the Expedition 71 crew aboard ISS, will be placed into a 245 by 245-kilometer low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with the Station on Sunday, Aug. 4. The NG-21 Cygnus will be captured and berthed to the ISS by the Canadarm2 robotic arm, after which it will be unloaded. During its stay aboard ISS, the Cygnus will be capable of conducting reboost maneuvers.

S.S. Francis R. “Dick” Scobee will be loaded with a selection of experiments for the crew to perform. Among these is an experiment to study colloidal gels, which are used in many products, stem cell investigations, vascular tissue, high-speed transmission of ultra-high resolution image data, an ultra-high-resolution sphere camera, and mycelium fungus growth in microgravity.

NG-21 will be the 360th mission of a Falcon 9 as well as the 74th Falcon 9 flight of 2024. SpaceX had aimed to fly 148 Falcon 9 missions this year but will need 15 flights per month from here on out to accomplish this. Regardless of whether they get to this target, SpaceX is poised to fly more than 100 flights this year for the same type of orbital rocket, which has not been done in a single year before.

(Lead image: Falcon 9 lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40. Credit: SpaceX)

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