Tag: Soyuz
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Launch Roundup: Cygnus XL and Progress fly cargo missions to ISS
Two cargo resupply missions have launched to the International Space Station this week. A Russian Soyuz launched the Progress MS-32 spacecraft Thursday, to be followed on Sunday by a Falcon 9 carrying Northrop Grumman’s new Cygnus XL vehicle. In addition to Cygnus XL, Falcon 9 launched one Starlink mission and two customer missions. Russia and…
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Russian space official: “We need to stop lying to ourselves” about health of industry
The chief of Russia’s main spacecraft manufacturer issued a dire warning this week, saying that his corporation has reached a “critical” condition and cannot continue in its present state. “The situation is critical: multi-million dollar debts, interest on loans that ‘eat up’ the budget, many processes that are ineffective, and a significant part of the…
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Russia launches Bion-M No.2 research satellite
Russia launched the Bion-M No.2 satellite at 17:13 UTC on Wednesday, Aug. 20, aboard a Soyuz-2-1b rocket from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This biomedical satellite is a continuation of a Soviet and later Russian scientific program, which started with the launch of Bion 1 back in 1973. The Bion program aims to study…
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Launch Roundup: SpaceX, Chinese, and Russian missions make up busy week
Two Chinese rockets, a pair of Russian missions, a trio of Falcon 9 launches, a New Shepard, an Electron, and the long-awaited tenth flight of Starship were scheduled to fly this week. In Russia, a Soyuz rocket launched a modernized version of the Vostok capsule that flew crewed missions in the 1960s from Baikonur, while…
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Roscosmos Ionosfera science mission launches atop Soyuz from Vostochny Cosmodrome
A Soyuz 2.1b rocket launched from Site 1S at Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia, carrying two Ionosfera-M satellites into a Sun-synchronous orbit. Launch took place on Friday, July 25, at 05:54 UTC and saw Soyuz fly on a northern trajectory over vast but sparsely populated territory. The Ionosfera-M no. 3 and no. 4 satellites are flying…
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Launch Roundup: Russian and European science missions launched during busy week
Seven launches took place this week. Four of these are Falcon 9s, with SpaceX launching two customer missions and two Starlink missions. Internationally, Russia and Europe have both launched science payloads, while, in Australia, Gilmour Space intended to attempt to launch its Eris rocket once again, but has delayed again, into next week. In China,…
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Launch Roundup: Starship Flight 9; SpaceX starts new Starlink shell; China, Russia also launch
This Launch Roundup has been extended to include the launch of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 9 on Tuesday/Wednesday. SpaceX was expected to begin building a new shell for its Starlink constellation last week, launching from Vandenberg to a polar orbit. This mission was postponed until Tuesday and now falls into the scope of this Roundup. Two…
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Butch and Suni weren’t the only ones: the stories of astronauts “stranded” in space
After a planned eight day mission to the ISS that launched in June 2024, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams splashed down near Florida over nine months later on March 18, 2025. The two astronauts missed family events, birthdays, and Christmas while engineers tried to determine whether Boeing’s Starliner capsule would be safe to return with…
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Expedition 73 underway on ISS, crew perform spacewalk
With Expedition 73 now underway, the International Space Station is hosting seven crewmembers again. Thursday saw the astronauts complete the Station’s third spacewalk of the year. The ISS crew is also getting ready for the upcoming arrival of the commercial Axiom-4 mission as well as conducting the usual science and maintenance tasks. Visiting Vehicles The…
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Rocket Report: “No man’s land” in rocket wars; Isaacman lukewarm on SLS
Welcome to Edition 7.39 of the Rocket Report! Not getting your launch fix? Buckle up. We’re on the cusp of a boom in rocket launches as three new megaconstellations have either just begun or will soon begin deploying thousands of satellites to enable broadband connectivity from space. If the megaconstellations come to fruition, this will…