SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Friday afternoon, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite into orbit 35 minutes later.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket is poised for launch from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT) Friday at the opening of a two-hour launch window.
Perched atop the rocket is the BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite, a spacecraft made by Space Systems/Loral, ready to beam television programming across Bulgaria and neighboring countries in the Balkans. The rocket will place the satellite into a high-altitude “supersynchronous” transfer orbit.
The timeline below outlines the launch sequence for the Falcon 9 flight with BulgariaSat 1, SpaceX’s second launch with a previously-flown first stage booster.
United Launch Alliance called off a test-firing of the company’s first flight-rated Vulcan Centaur rocket at Cape Canaveral Thursday to troubleshoot a problem with the booster’s engine ignition system.
Weeks after the launch of an earlier trio of Chinese military satellites, another spacecraft triplet successfully took off Feb. 24 aboard a Long March 4C rocket on a clandestine mission that analysts believe may involve spying on foreign naval forces.