Over the weekend, there were several rocket launches, including two human spaceflights on the same day (local time). The last time this happened was back in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

The first crew to go up on Saturday, June 4, at 13:25 UTC, was the six members of New Shepard-21, the program’s fifth human spaceflight. One of the six spaceflight participants was Blue Origin’s first repeat customer, Evan Dick. He previously flew on New Shepard-19 in December 2021. Another crewmember of note is Katya Echazarreta, a former NASA engineer and the first Mexican-born woman to go to space. Her seat was bought by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.

Victor Hespanha is the second Brazilian in space; his seat was funded by the cryptocurrency organization Crypto Space Agency. There were also two investors on NS-21: Jaison Robinson, also a former contestant on the tv show Survivor, and Victor Vescovo.

NS-21 reached an altitude of 107 kilometers above mean sea level, with the booster reaching a slightly lower 106 kilometers above mean sea level. The total mission duration was ten minutes, twelve seconds. The flight was delayed from late May due to a vehicle issue.

Also on June 4, the China National Space Agency launched their Shenzhou-14 mission to Tiangong at 02:44 UTC on the fifth, which was 10:44 China time on the fourth. A couple of minutes later, the Long March 2F rocket successfully inserted the spacecraft into orbit. The crew was not officially revealed until hours before launch and consisted of Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe. Chen and Liu have been into space before; Liu Yang became the first Chinese woman in space when she launched on Shenzhou-9 back in 2012.

Six and a half hours after launch, the spacecraft autonomously docked to Tiangong, and a few hours later, the crew entered the station. This crew has several big tasks ahead of them in their six-month mission: the integration of two lab modules, which will launch and dock later this year, the unloading of another cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-5, and the receiving of the next crew before they leave. This last event will set a milestone of six Chinese astronauts in space at one time on Tiangong. All of this work will also include a packed program of science, of course.

There were two more launches over the weekend. The first of those occurred on June 2 at 0400 UTC. A Long March 2C lifted off from Xichang with nine Geely Constellation-01 satellites. Geely is a Chinese car manufacturer that is building a satellite constellation for its future self-driving cars. This flight set a record for the most satellites launched by a Long March 2C.

Finally, the last launch this weekend was the latest Progress vehicle, MS-20, from Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS). After a very fast three-hour rendezvous it docked, bringing 2.5 metric tons of supplies to the station.

More Information

Blue Origin pre-launch press release

Blue Origin post-launch press release

CASC crewed launch press release (Chinese)

CASC Geely press release (Chinese)

Progress Cargo Craft Launches on Quick Station Trip (NASA)