Russia and Europe – Science Satellites to Orbit: On July 25, Russia’s Roscosmos successfully launched a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Vostochny Cosmodrome, carrying two Ionosfera-M research satellites into polar orbit nasaspaceflight.com. The mission, part of Russia’s “Ionozond” program, completed a constellation to monitor ionospheric space weather effects on Earth’s environment space.com space.com. The Soyuz also deployed 18 secondary payloads – 17 Russian CubeSats and Iran’s Nahid-2 telecom satellite – in a rare rideshare that highlights growing international partnerships in orbit nasaspaceflight.com space.com. Just hours later, Europe marked a Vega-C rocket success: at 10:03 p.m. ET on July 25, Vega-C lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, delivering MicroCarb and four CO3D Earth observation satellites into orbit space.com space.com. MicroCarb, led by CNES, will precisely map global CO₂ sources and sinks to within 1 ppm accuracy, aiding climate science space.com. The quartet of CO3D satellites, built by Airbus, will generate high-resolution 3D maps of Earth’s land surfaces, imaging in multiple visible and infrared bands at ~50 cm resolution space.com. Arianespace confirmed all five satellites were deployed successfully, marking Vega-C’s return to form after past setbacks space.com.
