Welcome everyone!

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2025-04-10 00:59 | |

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| | Scheduled for (local) | 2025-04-09 20:59 (EDT) | | Launch site | SLC-41, Cape Canaveral SFS, Florida, USA. | | Launch vehicle | Atlas V 551 | | Launch provider | United Launch Alliance (ULA) | | Customer | Amazon Kuiper Systems | | Payload | KA-01 | | Mission success criteria | Successful launch and deployment of payload into LEO |

Livestreams

| Stream | Link | |

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| | ULA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8XsTzF90sQ | | NASASpaceflight | https://www.youtube.com/@NASASpaceflight/streams | | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW3RoGNQk9w | | Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceflightNowVideo/streams | | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nov5NRi9ZiM |

Launch statistics

☑️ 1st Atlas V mission of 2025

☑️ 1st ULA mission of 2025

☑️ 102nd Atlas V mission overall

☑️ 164th ULA mission overall

Mission Details 🚀

• ULA mission page
• NextSpaceflight page

Project Kuiper is a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit that will offer broadband internet access managed by Kuiper Systems LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon. This constellation is planned to be composed of 3,236 satellites. The satellites are projected to be placed in 98 orbital planes in three orbital layers, one at 590 km, 610 km, and 630 km altitude.

Previous ULA launch: Vulcan Cert-2

Next ULA launch: TBD

Space nuclear power and propulsion technologies are poised for a breakthrough after decades of development, but will need consistent government investment to transition to operational systems, according to L3Harris executives.

“We are finally at the cusp for both nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal propulsion,” said Kristin Houston, president of space propulsion and power systems at L3Harris Technologies. “These solutions can be matured and be ready for flight in the next five years.”

Houston leads the business unit absorbed from L3Harris’s acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne — a longtime supplier of space nuclear propulsion systems to NASA.

Despite the promising outlook, Houston emphasized that consistent government investments and leadership are essential to deploy these technologies to help accelerate the space economy.

For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance's launch schedule.

Space Systems Command, which oversees the military's launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA's Vulcan rocket to SpaceX's Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force's fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world.

The Space Force did the same thing last year, when teams from the military, SpaceX, and Lockheed Martin pulled a GPS satellite out of storage and prepared it for launch on a Falcon 9 rocket in less than five months, instead of waiting for its previously assigned slot with United Launch Alliance. Officials dubbed the exercise a "Rapid Response Trailblazer" that could be replicated to fulfill future military needs.

In exchange for switching the next GPS satellite to launch on a Falcon 9, the Space Force will move a future GPS payload from SpaceX's Falcon Heavy back to ULA's Vulcan. That means the next three GPS satellites will fly on Vulcan. The Space Force compensated ULA for losing a GPS launch to last year's trailblazing SpaceX mission by reallocating another future GPS satellite to Vulcan.

Launches for the government’s Guowang and Shanghai-backed but more commercially oriented Qianfan (Thousand Sails) constellation began in the second half 2024, with each planned to consist of over 10,000 satellites, demanding more than a thousand launches in the coming years.

But despite emerging global norms and growing concern about orbital sustainability, China is leaving the upper stages of the rockets used for the launches in orbits that will persist in low Earth orbit (LEO) for over a century.

“For both constellations, the rocket upper stages are being left in high altitude orbits — generally with orbital lifetimes greater than 100 years.”

Victoria Samson, Chief Director, Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, echoed these concerns.

“Generally speaking, this is not good for anyone who wants to continue to receive benefits from the use of space. Pieces of debris at that altitude will stick around for years, if not decades,” Samson told SpaceNews.

“Leaving those rocket bodies at 700-800 km altitude is incredibly irresponsible. China is just beginning to launch its very large constellations so there is time to fix this before it becomes a grave danger.”

Samson added that China should work on active debris removal (ADR) missions to clean up earlier debris that it created, adding that this applied for both the United States and Russia also.

The Guowang and Qianfan constellations operate at much higher altitudes than Starlink. Guowang has batches of satellites orbiting at around 1,160 and 915 km, while most Qianfan satellites orbit at just above 1,000 km. Most Starlink satellites orbit at around 550 km.

This means both the satellites from the Chinese megaconstellations and the rockets used to get them into orbit will remain there for much longer if there is no deorbiting burn. Falcon 9 rockets currently used for Starlink launches involve a controlled deorbiting of the upper stage, while some Starlink satellites are deorbited after their mission lifetime. How Guowang and Qianfan satellites are handled after their own lifetimes is another matter of concern.

Another seven months, another crewed Soyuz launch to the ISS!

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2025-04-08, 05:47 | |

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| | Scheduled for (local) | 2025-04-08, 10:47 (AQTT) | | Docking scheduled for (UTC) | | | Mission | Soyuz MS-27 | | Launch site | Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. | | Vehicle | Soyuz 2.1a | | Commander | Sergey Ryzhikov 🇷🇺| | Flight Engineer | Alexey Zubritsky 🇷🇺| | Flight Engineer | Jonny Kim 🇺🇸| | Mission success criteria | Successful launch and docking to the ISS |

Livestreams

| Stream | Link | |

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| | Roscosmos | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-r9XyUbJNA | NASA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC807gzD9l8 | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnD2wG_cKpg | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D88DJGmwKII

Mission Details 🚀

• NextSpaceflight

Vast has signed an agreement with NASA to test its Haven-1 space station at an agency facility ahead of its launch next year.

Vast announced April 3 that it signed an agreement with NASA to conduct environmental testing of Haven-1 at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. That center, formerly known as Plum Brook Station, features facilities for thermal vacuum, acoustics, vibration and other tests.

The tests at Armstrong are scheduled to begin in early 2026, verifying the spacecraft can handle launch and in-space environments. Haven-1 is scheduled to launch no earlier than May 2026.

The company announced April 3 that it signed a contract worth 122.5 million euros ($136 million) with smallsat manufacturer Kongsberg NanoAvionics to produce 280 satellites for a constellation called Meridian Space.

SpinLaunch has publicly been working for several years on a launch system that would use a centrifuge to accelerate vehicles to hypersonic speeds, effectively replacing the first stage of a conventional launch vehicle. However, at the same time it was also thinking about the satellites that could be launched by such a system.

Hmm, a bold move for a company which has not achieved orbit yet.

SpinLaunch is now moving ahead with Meridian Space separate from its launch system, seeking a share of the strong demand for broadband satellite services.

Ah, there we go.

SpinLaunch will turn to others to launch the initial Meridian Space constellation. “We’re currently engaged with a multitude of launch providers, and there’s certainly a number of available launch systems,” Wrenn said.

The company is not abandoning plans for its own unconventional launch system. SpinLaunch separately announced April 3 that it signed a lease agreement with The Aleut Corporation, an Alaska Native regional corporation, for land on Adak Island, located in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands at nearly 180 degrees longitude.

Wrenn said the agreement marked an “exploratory phase” for development of its Orbital Launch System, which would feature a centrifuge 100 meters in diameter. “We looked everywhere in the U.S., and thinking internationally, and Adak has a unique combination of features that make it a very attractive prospective launch site,” he said, including infrastructure from a former military base and commercial airline service.

I hope they do eventually build this. I want to see an upper stage yeeted to orbital velocity by a giant centrifuge.

The committee announced late April 2 that it will hold a confirmation hearing for Isaacman on April 9 at 10 a.m. Eastern.