Over the summer, there were thirty orbital launches carrying a total of 507 satellites to orbit. A whopping 89% of those satellites were just for the Starlink constellation.

Two brand new rockets also made their debut flights in July and August. On July 27, China’s new Zhongke-1A took to the sky out of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

On August 7, the Indian Space Research Organization unveiled the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, also known as SSLV. Unfortunately, the first launch was a failure — the fourth stage only burned for a tenth of a second instead of the planned twenty seconds due to a bad sensor that prevented the fourth stage from firing the full duration.

August 4 was a day for setting records. On that day, a total of five rockets crossed the Karman line and entered space — this was the most ever in a 24-hour period. We don’t have time to go into depth about all of them, so here are the highlights.

To kick off the 24 hours of rocket launch extravaganza, Rocket Lab launched the classified NROL-199 mission from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.

Just under five and a half hours later, the second-to-last 400 series Atlas V took to the sky. Its payload was SBIRS GEO 6, a missile launch warning satellite for the U.S. military. The final 400 series Atlas V will launch later in 2022 carrying a weather satellite for NOAA.

Next up was Blue Origin’s NS-22: the only human spaceflight mission that launched during our hiatus, carrying six passengers to space and back. This set of passengers included the first individuals from Egypt and Portugal to reach space, as well as Vanessa O’Brien, who has now completed the trifecta of being the first woman to reach the top of Mount Everest, the bottom of Challenger Deep, and traveling above the Karman line.

Then China launched their classified reusable orbital space plane on a Long March 2F, the same variant of the rocket that launches their crewed Shenzhou spacecraft. This space plane, or one similar to it, was launched to orbit for the first time last year. Nothing is known about what it does in orbit or when it will return to Earth.

And to wrap up August 4’s rocket extravaganza, a Falcon 9 launched the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which will arrive at the Moon in a few months. The orbiter was originally meant to launch on Korea’s own KSLV II but was moved to Falcon 9 after the KSLV II was delayed.

More Information

An anomaly for two seconds led to SSLV mission’s underperformance: ISRO chief (The Hindu)

KPLO mission page (SpaceX)

China launches reusable experimental spacecraft (Xinhua)

ULA press release

Blue Origin press release