Launch Preview: Russia to debut Soyuz-5; Falcon 9 and Atlas V to launch internet satellites

The United States, Russia, China, New Zealand, and Norway are all set to host launches during another busy week of spaceflight. SpaceX is set to launch three missions from its Florida and California launch facilities, while the United Launch Alliance is scheduled to launch Amazon Leo satellites on its Atlas V rocket toward the end of the week.

Internationally, two Chinese rockets are expected to launch from Taiyuan and Jiuquan with unknown payloads. Isar Aerospace looks to launch its Spectrum rocket on its second mission from Norway, and Rocket Lab is expected to continue its regular launch cadence with an Electron from New Zealand on Wednesday. Lastly, Roscosmos is scheduled to launch the first Soyuz-5 rocket from Baikonur on Friday.

SpaceX is expected to conduct the week's first launch, Starlink Group 17-17, on Tuesday, March 24, at 4:03 PM PDT (23:03 UTC on Wednesday). Falcon 9 will liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, flying on a southern trajectory to place 25 Starlink v2 Mini satellites into a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).