Two orbits. Five satellites. Four upper stage burns. Follow the key events scheduled during the European Vega rocket’s launch from French Guiana with the PeruSat 1 high-resolution reconnaissance satellite and four commercial eyes-in-the-sky owned by Google’s Terra Bella imaging company.
San Francisco-based Planet, a company with a fleet of miniature satellites in orbit looking down on Earth, has acquired Terra Bella from Google to add high-resolution imaging to its business portfolio.
A European Vega rocket lifted off Tuesday from the Guiana Space Center on the northern shoreline of South America with a high-resolution reconnaissance satellite for the Moroccan government. Launch occurred at 8:42:31 p.m. EST Tuesday (0142:31 GMT Wednesday) from Kourou, French Guiana.
SpaceX raised a Falcon 9 rocket vertical Tuesday on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, positioning the launch vehicle for a flight Wednesday carrying 57 more Starlink Internet satellites and two commercial Earth-imaging microsatellites for BlackSky.