Watch Rocket Lab launch Earth-observing radar satellite today (Image Credit: Space.com)
Update for 10:45 a.m. ET on July 30: Rocket Lab is standing down from today’s planned launch due to weather. The company has not yet announced a new target date.
Rocket Lab will launch a private Earth-observing radar satellite today (July 30), and you can watch it live.
An Electron vehicle is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand site today during a two-hour window that opens at 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT; 4:15 a.m. on July 31 New Zealand time).
Rocket Lab will stream the launch live, beginning about 30 minutes before the window opens. You can watch here at Space.com if, as expected, the company makes the webcast available.
Today’s launch will send one of Japanese company Synspective’s Strix synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites to low Earth orbit. “Strix” is a widespread genus of owls, which explains the name that Rocket Lab has given to the mission: “Owl for One, One for Owl.”
Synspective’s constellation is “designed to deliver imagery that can detect millimeter-level changes to the Earth’s surface from space,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description. This constellation is in progress; it will be built via 16 Electron launches, four of which have already taken place.
If all goes according to plan today, the Strix satellite will be deployed into a circular orbit 337 miles (543 kilometers) above Earth about 57 minutes after liftoff.
Related: Rocket Lab launches a commercial radar-imaging satellite in dramatic night liftoff (video)
Rocket Lab is working to make the first stage of the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron reusable. The company has recovered boosters from the ocean on multiple previous missions, for example, and has even reflown an engine.
But we shouldn’t expect such activities on “Owl for One, One for Owl;” Rocket Lab’s mission description doesn’t mention anything about a booster recovery.
