4 Rocket Launches are Scheduled Within the Next 36 Hours
Exciting news for space enthusiasts! There are four launches scheduled in the next 36 hours.
Here’s what they are and how to watch them:
SpaceX
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company was going to start the day at approximately 09:11 EST (15:11 CET) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. But later the launch has been scrubbed and rescheduled for Wednesday morning.
According to a tweet from SpaceX, the start was put on hold due to an “out of family reading on first stage sensors
The US Air Force’s first Global Positioning System III space vehicle will be on board the Falcon 9 rocket. This is a communication satellite built to be better than the existing GPS constellations currently used by military and civilians globally, as reported by the US Air Force.
The satellite will be launched to medium Earth orbit — between 2,000 and 35,000 kilometres above sea level — about one hour and 56 minutes after takeoff.
You can watch the launch here.
Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos’s the CEO of Amazon’s Blue Origin space venture will be launching next, only 19 minutes after with a launch from West Texas slated for 14:30 UTC (15:30 CET).
This marks the tenth mission for New Shepard, and it will ferry nine NASA-sponsored research and technology payloads into space.
Some of these payloads include experiments that focus on measuring fuel levels in microgravity by using sound waves; gathering data on the naturally-occurring electromagnetic fields both inside and outside the rocket during the launch; and understanding how dust particles react after surface contact during exploration missions to places such as the Moon, Mars, and asteroids.
The launch can be viewed here.
Ariane Space
Ariane space will begin its last launch of 2018 at 13:37 local time (17:37 CET) from French Guiana.
The Soyuz rocket will hold France’s CSO-1 space vehicle — a high-resolution imaging satellite for the French military.
It will be launched into Sun-synchronous orbit about one hour after takeoff at an altitude of 800 km.
United Launch Alliance
The last launch will once again take place in the US by United Launch Alliance.
The Delta IV Heavy rocket is set for takeoff from the Vanderberg Air Force Base in California at 17:57 local time (02:57 CET on Wednesday).
It will contain the classified NROL-71 spacecraft for the US National Reconnaissance Office which will be deployed six minutes after lift-off.
The launch can be seen here.
Photo credit: ESA
