Rocket Report: SpaceX steamroller rolls on; Russian rocket workers are idled

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket first stage launches for the 13th time on June 17, 2022. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

Welcome to Edition 4.47 of the Rocket Report! It has been a big week for NASA, with the near completion of its wet-dress rehearsal test for the Space Launch System rocket. Assuming final preparations go well, this sets up a huge launch in a couple of months that we will be following with great interest.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

South Korea successfully launches its own rocket. The three-stage Nuri rocket, built by the government’s Korea Aerospace Research Institute with hundreds of local companies, ​blasted off from the Naro Space Center in Goheung​ on Tuesday, The New York Times reports. Seventy minutes after the​ liftoff, South Korea announced that ​Nuri had succeeded in its mission of ​thrusting a ​357 lb ​working ​satellite, as well as a 162 kg dummy satellite​, into orbit ​435 miles above the Earth.