SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will go from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit in less than 10 minutes Friday with a Dragon capsule heading for the International Space Station carrying more than 5,900 pounds of supplies and experiments.
Liftoff is set for 0942 GMT (5:42 a.m. EDT) Friday from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad.
It will be the 57th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and SpaceX’s 12th launch of the year. Working under contract to NASA, Friday’s launch will be the 15th of least 26 SpaceX resupply missions to depart for the space station.
SpaceX does not intend to recover the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage on Friday’s mission. The booster is already a veteran of one launch in April, when it propelled NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite toward orbit.
After unusual concentrations of hydrogen around the rocket foiled a launch attempt Dec. 19, United Launch Alliance said Friday that the company’s powerful Delta 4-Heavy launcher and a U.S. government spy satellite will remain grounded in California until at least Jan. 6 as engineers troubleshoot a small fuel leak.
Kurt Eberly, who helps lead the Antares rocket program at Orbital ATK, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about the launcher’s return-to-flight with newly-built engines later this year.
Components for China’s third Long March 5 rocket arrived at the country’s southern launch base this week as teams prepare for the first flight of the heavy-lift launcher since a 2017 mission ended in failure.