Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with the first 10 next-generation satellites for Iridium’s voice and data relay fleet.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket will lift off Saturday at 9:54:39 a.m. PST (12:54:39 p.m. EST; 1754:39 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship departed the International Space Station on Wednesday, fired rocket thrusters to brake out of orbit, and parachuted to a picture-perfect splashdown in the Pacific Ocean with approximately 3,461 pounds of experiment samples and equipment.
SpaceX is gearing up for the first commercial launch of its powerful Falcon Heavy rocket as soon as early April with a communications satellite for Arabsat, and the U.S. Air Force hopes the two side boosters from the Arabsat mission can be safely landed and reused for the military’s first Falcon Heavy mission this summer, an exercise officials said will help certify previously-flown hardware for future national security launches.
Boosted off planet Earth by a Russian Proton rocket, a European-built space probe departed for Mars on Monday, beginning a mission to test future landing technologies and search for methane, a potential signature of microbial life.