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.

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.

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.

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