Mission Reports

Fifty-three more Starlink internet satellites are fastened to the top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff Thursday from Cape Canaveral, the first of five Falcon 9 flights scheduled for July.

If it feels like there are more rockets launching into orbit than ever before, it’s not just you. The world’s launch operators, led by SpaceX and China’s state-run enterprises, launched 72 missions into orbit in the first half of 2022, on pace to break last year’s record of 135 orbital deliveries.

Virgin Orbit’s air-launched rocket carried seven small CubeSats into orbit on the company’s first nighttime mission late Friday night off the coast of California, helping clear the way for teams to base the next Virgin Orbit launch from the United Kingdom later this year.

Virgin Orbit’s fifth LauncherOne rocket mission began with release from the company’s Boeing 747 carrier aircraft over the Pacific Ocean at 11:53 p.m. PDT Friday (2:53 a.m. EDT; 0653 GMT Saturday). The air-launched rocket is carrying seven small CubeSat payloads into orbit for the U.S. military and NASA.