Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with three Earth observation satellites for Canada’s Radarsat Constellation Mission.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket will lift off Wednesday at 7:17 a.m. PDT (10:17 a.m. EDT; 1417 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster, which previously completed a launch and landing in March, will return for a propulsive touchdown at Vandenberg around eight minutes later.
A Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the EchoStar 21 communications satellite Thursday, the heaviest commercial payload ever flown aboard a Russian booster.
Officials with Canadian Earth observation company UrtheCast, which owns two cameras on the International Space Station’s Russian service module, outlined plans to install a remote sensing camera and a radar imaging payload on the outpost’s U.S.-owned Tranquility module in 2017.
Departing on three pillars of fire, the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off at 1:51 p.m. from Cape Canaveral for a classified national security satellite deployment.