SpaceX launched Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite from Cape Canaveral at 7:18 p.m. EDT (2318 GMT) Sunday. A Falcon 9 rocket headed toward the south on a trajectory hugging the Florida East Coast on the first flight into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral since 1969, and the first stage booster returned to the spaceport for an onshore landing minutes after liftoff.
Delays have set up the possibility of up to three rocket launches this weekend from different pads along Florida’s Space Coast, including two SpaceX missions on Sunday that could set a company record for the shortest span between two Falcon 9 rocket launches. But in the world of ever-changing launch schedules, numerous factors such as weather and technical issues could thwart launch plans this weekend.
SES announced Thursday it has tapped SpaceX for two additional Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral to deliver more Boeing-built O3b mPower broadband satellites into orbit, adding to a pair of Falcon 9 flights ordered by SES last year to launch the first batch of mPower platforms beginning in late 2021.
The last planned batch of high-resolution SkySat commercial Earth-viewing reconnaissance satellites owned by Planet will accompany 58 Starlink broadband relay stations on a climb into orbit Tuesday from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, adding to the world’s two largest commercial satellite fleets.
The first operational flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts aboard is set to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than Oct. 23, following a formal certification review to assess data from the Crew Dragon’s two-man test flight that concluded earlier this month, NASA said Friday.
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