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
The Falcon 9 rocket’s eighth flight of 2016 took off from Cape Canaveral early Sunday with the Japanese JCSAT 16 communications satellite, setting a new mark for the most launches made by SpaceX in a single year.
Despite a growing number of rocket options, the availability of on-time launch services remains a key factor in getting BlackSky’s constellation of Earth-imaging smallsats into orbit. SpaceX’s rideshare launch service will give BlackSky a chance to add two more spacecraft to its fleet on a Falcon 9 rocket with the next batch of Starlink Internet payloads.
SpaceX’s first launch since August took off Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A Falcon 9 rocket deployed the first 10 next-generation Iridium communications satellites, part of a $3 billion upgrade to the company’s space network. Liftoff occurred at 9:54 a.m. PST (12:54 p.m. EST; 1754 GMT), and the Falcon 9’s first stage landed on a barge in the Pacific a few minutes later.