Q&A with Emiliano Kargieman, founder and CEO of Satellogic (members only)

When SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket takes off with 64 small satellites — a payload cache representing 34 customers in 17 nations — it will be just the first act in a nearly five-hour sequence to deftly deploy each of the spacecraft, which range in size from a Rubik’s cube to a refrigerator.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, standing 197 feet tall and and weighing 1.2 million pounds, unleashes 2.4 million pounds of thrust from its main engine and four side-mounted solid boosters to launch the secret NROL-42 payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set to roll to its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral, a day before liftoff with a new-generation NOAA weather satellite. The launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Spanish communications satellite is expected to be shuffled after the Atlas 5 flight in a rapid-fire launch sequence at the Florida spaceport this week.