A European Ariane 5 rocket will propel two communications satellites from a standstill to a speed of nearly 21,000 mph (9,365 meters per second) in 25 minutes during a launch Friday from French Guiana.
The nearly 180-foot-tall (55-meter) launcher will blast off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 2030 GMT (4:30 p.m. EDT; 5:30 p.m. French Guiana time) on its third flight of the year with the EchoStar 18 and BRIsat communications satellites.
Both made by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California, the spacecraft will ride aboard the Ariane 5 in a dual-payload stack. The larger of the two satellites, EchoStar 18, will deploy first, followed by separation of BRIsat around 42 minutes after liftoff.
The rocket will target an orbit ranging from 155 miles (250 kilometers) to 22,224 miles (35,766 kilometers), with a tilt of 6 degrees to the equator.
Date source: Arianespace
T-0:00:00: Vulcain 2 ignition
T+0:00:07: Solid rocket booster ignition and liftoff
An Ariane 5 rocket will fire into the sky from French Guiana Thursday evening and deliver a record heavyweight payload to orbit less than an hour later.
SpaceX and SES, an international communications satellite operator based in Luxembourg, have agreed to place the SES 10 television relay craft aboard the first launch of a reused “flight-proven” Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral as soon as October, the companies announced Tuesday.
SpaceX’s next launch of satellites for the company’s Starlink broadband network — planned in the final days of 2019 — will carry one spacecraft with an experimental coating designed to make it less reflective in orbit, a first step in assuaging concerns from scientists who say the deployment of thousands more Starlink stations would impede some astronomical observations.