SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching for record-tying 22nd time tonight (Image Credit: Space.com)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch for a record-tying 22nd time on Sunday night (Aug. 11).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the two spacecraft of the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday at 10:02 p.m. EDT (7:02 p.m. local California time; 0202 GMT on Aug. 12).
SpaceX will stream the launch live via its X account, beginning about 15 minutes before launch.
If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after launch, landing on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
It will be the 22nd launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. That will tie the company’s rocket-reuse record, set this past June during a launch of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, will continue carrying the ASBM satellites to orbit. It will deploy the first one 42.5 minutes after liftoff and the second one five minutes later.
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ASBM “is designed to expand broadband coverage to the Arctic region for the U.S. Space Force and Space Norway,” according to aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, which built the mission’s two satellites. (Space Norway is a state-owned company that develops and manages strategic space infrastructure for the nation.)
The ASBM satellites — which will operate in a highly elliptical orbit to reach their coverage area — carry multiple instruments, “including military payloads for the U.S. and Norwegian Armed Forces, as well as a commercial payload for Viasat, and a radiation monitor for the European Commission,” Northrop Grumman wrote in its mission description.
Sunday’s launch is part of a busy weekend for SpaceX. On Saturday morning (Aug. 10), the company launched 21 Starlink satelllites from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX tried to launch another Starlink batch on Sunday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which is also on Florida’s Space Coast, but aborted that try with 46 seconds left in the countdown.
