SpaceX plans to launch its second mission in a span of seven hours on Friday morning (May 19), and you possibly can watch the motion live.
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 21 satellites for the businesses Iridium and OneWeb is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Friday at 9:19 a.m. EDT (1319 GMT; 6:19 a.m. local California time).
Watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the corporate (opens in latest tab). Coverage is predicted to start about quarter-hour before launch.
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If all goes based on plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth about nine minutes after liftoff. It’s going to touch down on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which might be stationed within the Pacific Ocean.
It’s going to be the eleventh launch and landing for this particular booster, SpaceX said in a mission description (opens in latest tab).
The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, will proceed carrying the satellites — five belonging to Iridium and the opposite 16 to OneWeb — to low Earth orbit. They’re scheduled to be deployed over the course of about half-hour, starting roughly an hour after liftoff.
Fifteen of the OneWeb satellites will further construct out the corporate’s broadband constellation in low Earth orbit. The sixteenth is a technology demonstrator often called JoeySat.
“JoeySat incorporates several latest technologies, including a digitally regenerative payload and demonstration of multi-beam electronically steered phased array antennas,” OneWeb wrote in a mission description (opens in latest tab).
SpaceX has already launched three batches of OneWeb web satellites, sending 40 spacecraft skyward on each of those previous missions.
The five Iridium satellites are spares that may provide further backup for the corporate’s 66 currently operational telecom satellites. (Iridium already has nine spare satellites in orbit.)
“Our constellation is incredibly healthy; nevertheless, the spare satellites haven’t any utility to us on the bottom,” Iridium CEO Matt Desch said in a statement in September 2022 (opens in latest tab), when this SpaceX launch was announced.
“We built extra satellites as an insurance policy, and with SpaceX’s stellar track record, we sit up for one other successful launch, which is able to position us even higher to duplicate the longevity of our first constellation,” he added.
This launch might be the second in rapid succession for SpaceX. The corporate also launched 22 of its own Starlink “V2 mini” web satellites from Florida’s Space Coast on Friday at 2:19 a.m. EDT (0619 GMT).
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