The launch of a commercial Bulgarian television broadcast satellite from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is set for Monday after SpaceX ran through a mock countdown Thursday and test-fired a previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket’s Merlin main engines.
European engineers test-fired the world’s most powerful present-day single-segment solid rocket booster Monday in French Guiana, clearing a major development hurdle for the Vega-C and Ariane 6 launchers set for debuts in 2019 and 2020.
The Starlink 6-96 mission added another 29 broadband internet satellites to the low Earth orbit constellation. SpaceX launched from Space Launch Complex 40 on Friday, Jan. 9, at 4:41 p.m. EST (2141 UTC).