Missions this week
On Tuesday, May 5, SpaceX will open the week with the Starlink Group 17-29 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 10:00 p.m. EDT. The Falcon 9 will deliver a batch of Starlink broadband internet satellites to low Earth orbit, with the first stage booster targeting a landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific.
On Saturday, May 9, SpaceX returns to Vandenberg for Starlink Group 17-37 at 10:00 a.m. EDT, another Starlink run, again with booster recovery planned on Of Course I Still Love You.
Later on May 9, China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) will launch Tianzhou 10 atop a Long March 7 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in southern China at 6:00 p.m. EDT. Tianzhou is China’s uncrewed cargo spacecraft, analogous to Russia’s Progress or SpaceX’s Dragon Cargo — it delivers supplies to the Tiangong space station before being loaded with waste and deorbiting to burn up in the atmosphere. This flight marks the 10th mission of the Tianzhou series and the ninth dedicated resupply run to Tiangong.
The spacecraft’s manifest includes the full range of necessities — food, fuel, spare parts, and fresh spacesuits for spacewalks — plus hardware supporting ongoing scientific research. The flight is one of three missions China has planned to Tiangong this year, with two crewed Shenzhou launches also on the 2026 manifest.
Last week’s recap
ULA opened the week on Monday, April 27, with an Amazon LEO satellite deployment on an Atlas V 551 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
On Wednesday, April 29, a Falcon Heavy carrying the ViaSat-3 F3 geostationary communications satellite — the final piece of ViaSat’s planned global communications network, targeting the Asia-Pacific region. SpaceX also snuck in a Starlink Group 17-36 mission from Vandenberg the same day.
On Thursday, April 30, Arianespace’s Ariane 64 carried another Amazon LEO batch from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.
April 30 also saw the debut flight of Russia’s long-awaited Soyuz-5 rocket from Baikonur — a brief but successful suborbital demo of the new vehicle, which is designed to replace the Zenit rocket using fully Russian-built hardware.
The week closed on Sunday, May 3, with SpaceX flying the CAS500-2 rideshare mission from Vandenberg.
Looking ahead
Next week is shaping up to be busier than this week.
On Tuesday, May 12, China has a Long March 6A mission scheduled from Taiyuan with an as-yet unannounced payload.
Later that day, SpaceX has a classified NRO payload — NROL-172 — manifested on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, as well as CRS SpX-34, the latest commercial resupply service mission to the International Space Station, from Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX is also targeting May 12 for Starship Flight 12 from Starbase, Texas — the next integrated test of the massive Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster stack. Starship is central to NASA’s Artemis program, which has selected it as the lunar lander that will return American astronauts to the Moon, and SpaceX envisions the vehicle as the long-term backbone of crewed missions to Mars — making each test flight a critical step toward both goals.
SpaceX will round out the week with yet another Falcon 9 Starlink mission from Vandenberg on May 15 at 10:11 p.m. EDT, with booster recovery planned on Of Course I Still Love You.
