Europe’s fifth Sentinel Earth observation satellite will ride a four-stage Vega rocket into polar orbit 488 miles (786 kilometers) above Earth to begin tracking changes in agriculture and forestry patterns and monitoring natural disasters.
The ascent will take nearly an hour following launch from French Guiana at 0149:24 GMT March 7 (8:49:24 p.m. EST March 6).
An uncrewed spacecraft landed in China’s Inner Mongolia region Monday after nearly 13 days in orbit carrying an array of microgravity research experiments, including a groundbreaking investigation that showed mammal embryos can develop in space, Chinese state media reported.
An Ariane 5 rocket emerged from the final assembly building at the Guiana Space Center in South America on Monday for the journey across the tropical spaceport to the ELA-3 launch zone, where the 179-foot-tall (54.8-meter) booster will lift off Tuesday with a pair of commercial communications satellites.
DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 4 commercial satellite, which will join sister-craft WorldView 3 in orbit to snap the highest quality Earth imagery available on the market at 31-centimeter resolution, was built by Lockheed Martin and will be launched Friday atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.