On the heels of a busy launch week, this week will see even more launches from around the globe. SpaceX is expected to launch five Falcon 9 missions — including a rideshare and the delayed Axiom Mission 4 crewed mission — along with a launch of the rarely-flown Angara A5 rocket from Russia. The last ever flight of the H-IIA, Japan’s long-time medium-lift workhorse, is on the schedule, as is a Chinese launch and a Blue Origin crewed suborbital launch.
A pair of Falcon 9 launches are scheduled from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, while three Falcon 9s are flying from Florida. The New Shepard NS-33 crewed launch is flying from West Texas. Angara is flying an unknown payload from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far northern Russia.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 15-9
The first Falcon 9 launch of the week from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) is scheduled for Monday, June 16, at 5:51 PM PDT (00:51 UTC on Tuesday, June 17), at the start of a four-hour window. The launch window ends at 9:51 PM PDT (04:51 UTC June 17).
The booster, which is not yet known, will fly on a southeast trajectory and land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship in the Pacific. The second stage will take a batch of Starlink v2 Mini satellites into orbit.
This flight is the 74th Falcon 9 launch of 2025, as the company works toward flying its Falcon rocket family up to 170 times this year.
A stack of Starlink satellites, including a Direct-To-Cell satellite at the top. The deployable antenna and its hinge can clearly be seen in this image. (Credit: SpaceX)
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-18
The next Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is scheduled for early Wednesday, June 18, at 1:38 AM EDT (05:38 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40). The four-hour launch window ends at 5:38 AM EDT (09:38 UTC).
The booster, which is not yet known, will fly on a northeast trajectory from SLC-40, unlike most recent Starlink flights, which fly southeast trajectories. The booster will land on one of SpaceX’s two east coast droneships downrange in the Atlantic, while the second stage will carry a batch of Starlink v2 Mini satellites to orbit.
This flight will be the 75th Falcon 9 flight of 2025.
Angara A5 being processed for flight. (Credit: Russian Ministry of Defense)
Angara A5/Briz-M | Unknown Payload
The Russian Armed Forces is launching a secret spacecraft aboard an Angara rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia’s far north. Launch is scheduled for Thursday, June 19, at 03:00 UTC from Site 35/1 at Plesetsk, Russia’s primary military spaceport.
The Angara A5/Briz-M is the replacement for the Proton heavy-lift vehicle that served the Soviet and Russian space efforts for decades. The rocket will take an eastward trajectory, but little is known about the orbit or the payload.
This is the fifth overall flight of the Angara A5 and the first flight of 2025 for the rocket. Angara was designed as a modular family of rockets with different payload and orbit capabilities, and the A5 uses five core stages strapped together along with a second stage.
For this flight, the Briz-M will act as the vehicle’s third stage. The Briz-M is a liquid-fueled stage and uses storable but toxic hypergolic propellants. It is capable of up to eight restarts in flight, allowing for payload deployments in various orbits and higher orbital altitudes.
Booster B1094 and Dragon C213 vertical at LC-39A ahead of the Ax-4 launch. (Credit: Axiom Space)
The repeatedly delayed Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), a private crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS), is currently planned to launch no earlier than Thursday, June 19, at 4:53 AM EDT (08:53 UTC) during an instantaneous window. This launch date is pending the resolution of recent cracking and pressure issues aboard the ISS Russian segment.
Booster B1094-2 will fly on a northeastern trajectory, with a return to launch site recovery at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1). Meanwhile, the second stage will propel Crew Dragon C213 into an orbit inclined 51.6 degrees to the equator, matching the ISS’s orbit. Dragon and its crew of four will rendezvous and dock with the ISS at the Harmony module’s zenith docking port.
Ax-4’s Crew Dragon is a new vehicle, the last of its type SpaceX will build. Crew Dragon C213 is making its first-ever flight, and the Ax-4 crew will get the honor of naming the spacecraft once in orbit.
The Ax-4 crew in their seat positions within Dragon. (Credit: SpaceX)
The Ax-4 crew is commanded by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, a Shuttle and ISS veteran making her fifth flight to the Station and representing the United States on this international crew. Ax-4’s pilot is India’s Shubhanshu Shukla, a member of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) new astronaut corps. Shukla will be the first Indian astronaut to fly to the ISS.
Ax-4’s crew also has two members from European countries. Poland’s Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski represents the European Space Agency (ESA) as a project astronaut, while Hungary’s Tibor Kapu is a Hungarian Space Office astronaut. These men will also be the first people from their countries to fly to the ISS.
Ax-4 is currently scheduled to be in orbit for two to three weeks, and its return will depend on weather conditions off the southern California coast. This launch will serve as the 76th Falcon 9 launch of this year, as well as the eighth crewed launch of 2025.
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-23
The second Falcon 9 launch from CCSFS this week is another Starlink mission. Starlink Group 10-23 is scheduled to fly on Friday, June 20, at 2:32 AM EDT (06:32 UTC) at the start of a four-hour launch window. The window ends at 6:32 AM EDT (10:32 UTC).
The yet-to-be-announced booster will take a northeast trajectory from SLC-40, similar to Starlink Group 10-18. The booster will land on a droneship in the Atlantic, while the second stage takes a batch of Starlink v2 Mini satellites to orbit.
This launch will be the 77th Falcon 9 flight of 2025.
CZ-3B/E at the pad. (Credit: CASC)
Chang Zheng 3B/E | Unknown Payload
China’s only scheduled launch of the week is scheduled to fly from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China. A Chang Zhang 3B/E (CZ-3B/E) is set to fly on Friday, June 20, at 12:35 UTC from Launch Complex 3 (LC-3) at Xichang, with the launch window extending to 13:02 UTC. The rocket will fly on an eastward trajectory, which could indicate a payload launching into a geosynchronous or other high-altitude Earth orbit.
The CZ-3B/E is one of China’s workhorses for launching geosynchronous orbiting satellites, and while the payload is currently not known, it could be one of these types of spacecraft. Geosynchronous orbit is widely used by communication, weather, and intelligence-gathering satellites.
This flight is the 10th mission of the Chang Zheng 3 series in 2025 and the 169th mission overall for the rocket.
Exolaunch deployment hardware. (Credit: Exolaunch)
The second Falcon 9 launch of the week from VSFB features a rideshare mission for small payloads, part of SpaceX’s Transporter series that flies to a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). Transporter 14 is scheduled to launch on Friday, June 20, at 2:19 PM PDT (21:19 UTC) from SLC-4E, at the start of a window ending at 3:38 PM PDT (22:38 UTC).
The booster, which is not yet known, will conduct a return-to-launch-site landing at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) near SLC-4E, while the second stage will continue on its southward trajectory to SSO.
Notable payloads include a Celestis capsule that will orbit Earth with remains of people who have signed up for “space funerals.” This capsule is designed to orbit Earth for approximately a week before splashing down in the ocean; the remains will be sent to the families as a keepsake.
The Mission Possible spacecraft before its shipment to the United States. (Credit: The Exploration Company)
The Celestis capsule, named Mission Possible, is not the only payload on this mission designed to return to Earth. The Varda Space W-4 capsule is also aboard, as is the MayaSat-1 biological research satellite scheduled to reenter three hours after launch.
Other spacecraft include the NASA PADRE 12U CubeSat, intended to study polarization from solar flares in X-rays, as well as 46 payloads to be flown by the German company Exolaunch. The company will fly payloads from the United States, the United Kingdom, and 13 other countries worldwide.
This flight will be the 78th Falcon 9 launch of 2025 and the fifth of this week.
New Shepard NS-29 on the pad during the T-10 minute hold. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin’s fourth crewed launch of 2025 — and the ninth overall crewed launch of the year — is scheduled for Saturday, June 21, at 6:30 AM MDT (12:30 UTC) from Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas. Like all New Shepard flights, NS-33 will be a suborbital flight meant to spend a few minutes above the Kármán Line at 100 km altitude.
NS-33 will carry six crew members to space and back. A husband and wife involved in environmental conservation — Carl and Allie Kuehner — along with philanthropist Leland Larson, entrepreneur and golfer Freddie Rescigno Jr., attorney Owolabi Salis, and retired attorney Jim Sitkin are all making their first trips to space. The Kuehners will be one of the very few married couples to fly aboard a space mission; NASA’s Mark Lee and Jan Davis were married before their flight on STS-47 in 1992.
The New Shepard capsule will descend to Earth on parachutes and touch down on the Texas soil, while the booster will land propulsively on a concrete pad before both elements are reused. This is the fifth New Shepard launch of 2025 as the company increases its cadence of tourist flights.
The final H-IIA being prepared for flight. (Credit: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries)
The very last H-II family mission is scheduled to fly on Monday, June 23, at 16:33 UTC from the LA-Y1 launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. The 50th and final flight of the H-IIA will take a southward trajectory to launch the GOSAT-GW Earth observation satellite to SSO.
GOSAT-GW is designed to monitor greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, in Earth’s atmosphere, in addition to measuring the total amount of Earth’s water on the surface and in the atmosphere.
This flight is the only H-IIA flight of 2025 as its successor, the H3 family, ramps up its operations following four successful flights in 2024. The H-IIA finishes its career with launches of notable payloads like the United Arab Emirates Hope probe to Mars and the XRISM observatory. Out of 50 orbital launch attempts, the H-IIA successfully flew 49 missions.
(Lead image: Falcon 9 launches from Florida. Credit: Julia Bergeron for NSF)
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