This Week in Launch: Vandenberg to host first SpaceX launch of the year

Welcome to 2024, a year hopefully of many firsts. India started the year off with a launch just a few hours into New Years Day but here in the Western Hemisphere, SpaceX will kick things off with you guessed it, a Starlink launch.

Also, special guest this week since it’s launching so early Monday morning, ULA plans to debut its Vulcan rocket after years of delays.

This week’s launches:

• January 2 (Tuesday)
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Group 7-9, 6:13 P.M. PT
    • SLC-4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California
• January 3 (Wednesday)
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Ovzon-3, 6:05 P.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
• January 5 (Friday)
  • ExPace Kuaizhou 1A Unknown Payload, 5:00 A.M. ET
    • Site 95A, Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China
• January 8 (Monday)
  • ULA Vulcan Peregrine Mission One, 2:18 A.M. ET
    • SLC-41, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

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SpaceX kicks off 2024 with two launches

SpaceX rounded out 2023 with 98 launches, this year the company wants to launch as many as 144 Falcon 9s and Heavies in just 365 days. While difficult, if any company can do it it’s going to be SpaceX.

To do so the company will need to launch once every two and a half days. This week SpaceX has two launches on the docket, one Starlink and one commercial. This is on the lower end of the weekly launch cadence, 2.8 launches per week, so more three launch weeks than two. But SpaceX has shown to be able to catch up pretty quickly in a few weeks.

SpaceX’s official first launch of 2024 will be Starlink Group 7-9 out of Vandenberg, California. SpaceX hopes to launch once a week from the West Coast, bringing them to about 50 launches by year’s end. Most of these are expected to be Starlink satellites as the company is still pushing to get as many up into space as possible.

Second up for SpaceX will be Ovzon-3, a Swedish broadband internet satellite that will sit up in geostationary orbit. This launch will feature an RTLS landing back at LZ-1, something we just recently witness during SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy mission a few days ago.

Both of these missions where delayed from the off week SpaceX had in December where weather and mechanical issues forced these flights to be rescheduled.

Vulcan to debut early Monday morning

The first “first” of 2024 is already right around the corner. Originally expected to launch on Christmas Eve, ULA’s first Vulcan rocket is now set to lift off in the early hours of Monday morning.

We’ve talked about this plenty of times before but for those that need to be caught up, on top will be Astrobotic‘s first Peregrine lunar lander. As part of NASA‘s Commercial Lunar Payloads Services program, this is a demonstration that the company can indeed land on the Moon.

So far only government lead landers have ever made it to the lunar surface and survived. India, the most recent addition, just joined that exclusive club, which includes the United States, Russia, and China, last year.

If Peregrine isn’t successful, commercial lunar landers will have a second chance with Intuitive Machine‘s first mission taking flight on a Falcon 9 rocket later this month.

This Vulcan flight, however, is ULA’s first certification mission for the US Space Force. A second certification flight will be needed before ULA can launch any defense missions on the rocket, its current bread and butter. However, the company is moving to support more commercial satellite companies, like Amazon’s Project Kuiper, to increase launch rates.