Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with 64 smallsats on Spaceflight’s SSO-A: SmallSat Express rideshare mission.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket will lift off Monday at 10:31 a.m. PST (1:31 p.m. EST; 1831 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
A team of SpaceX engineers is building a prototype of the spaceship Elon Musk hopes will one day carry people and cargo deep into the solar system, and it could begin low-altitude testing next year, kicking off a multi-step test campaign before eventually going into space, then perhaps the moon or Mars.
The sixth and final satellite in the U.S. military’s most secure satellite communications fleet lifted off from Cape Canaveral Thursday aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, extending the network’s expected lifetime beyond 2030.
Starship completed a successful climb to approximately 10 kilometers altitude and then descended horizontally toward the landing site. It appeared to lose control as it was in the process of flipping back to a vertical position and exploded as it bellyflopped onto the landing pad. Watch a replay of the test flight.