A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set to loft three military satellites for the U.S. Air Force on a mission codenamed AFSPC 11. This timeline shows the major mission events planned over a six-hour flight to a near-geostationary orbit.
The 197-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket, propelled by an RD-180 main engine and five solid rocket boosters, is set for liftoff during a launch window Saturday that opens at 7:13 p.m. EDT (2313 GMT) and closes at 9:11 p.m. EDT (0111 GMT Sunday).
The AFSPC 11 mission will be the 77th flight of an Atlas 5 rocket, and the third Atlas 5 launch of 2018.
A military communications satellite named CBAS, or Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM, is the forward payload in the Atlas 5’s upper shroud. A spacecraft named EAGLE, which contains several military experiments including a separating subsatellite named Mycroft, is in the aft position inside the Atlas 5 payload fairing.
The artist’s concepts posted below show generic payload illustrations used on previous missions.
A nest of genetically-engineered mice, a research study to observe the behavior of fires in space, and an experiment that could lead to brewing beer in microgravity are among more than 5,700 pounds of cargo inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule awaiting launch from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station Thursday.
Veteran Russian commander Oleg Novitskiy, rookie flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov, and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei launched into orbit Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42 a.m. EDT (0742 GMT). The crew members rode a Soyuz capsule in pursuit of the International Space Station, where docking occurred at 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT).
Follow the unclassified portion of the Atlas 5 rocket’s ascent to space from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base launch site with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office’s NROL-79 satellite payload. Launch is scheduled for Wednesday at 9:50 a.m. local time (12:50 p.m. EST; 1750 GMT).