Rocket Lab and SpaceX are planning to launch missions on Friday (April 1), and you can watch the double head of space live.
a rocket lab The Electron vehicle is scheduled to roll out two Earth observation satellites of the US company BlackSky Friday at 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT) from the Rocket Lab site in New Zealand.
About four hours later, at 12:24 PM EDT (1624 GMT), a SpaceX A Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying into orbit 40 satellites for a variety of customers, weather permitting. Forecasts currently expect there will only be a 30% chance of good enough weather to take off, SpaceX tweeted on Thursday (31 March).
The first stage of Falcon 9 will return to a land Shortly after takeoff and landing on an autonomous drone stationed in the Atlantic, if all goes according to plan.
You can watch both missions here on Space.com when the time comes, courtesy of launch providers. You can also follow the procedure directly from rocket lab And the SpaceX.
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The launch of Rocket Lab, dubbed “Without Mission a Beat,” will be the 25th Electron launch overall. If all goes according to plan, the number of satellites delivered into orbit by California-based Rocket Lab will rise to 112, According to the company’s mission description.
Rocket Lab is making Electron’s two-stage first stage reusable, lowering boosters for ocean splash and recovery operations on many previous missions. However, there will be no such activities in “Without a Win Mission”.
SpaceX is already routinely reusing rockets, and its Friday mission, called Transporter 4, will continue that trend. The first stage of Friday’s Falcon 9 flight already has six launches and landings under its belt, According to the description of the mission of SpaceX.
The two launches on Friday are part of a very busy and exciting day for space lovers. Friday also marks the start of NASA’s three-day “wet dress rehearsal” Artemis 1 The mission, which will use a massive rocket from the Space Launch System (SLS) to send an unmanned Orion capsule around the moon.
during the wet rehearsal, members of the Artemis 1 team will undergo several pre-launch procedures, including fueling the SLS. If all goes well with testing, Artemis 1 could start as early as May or June.
Mike Wall is the author of “AbroadBook (Great Grand Publishing House, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrials. Follow him on Twitter Tweet embed. Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed or on Facebook.