These photos show SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with a previously-flown first stage booster, sitting on its launch pad Tuesday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California ahead of the scheduled liftoff of the Radarsat Constellation Mission.
SpaceX teams working at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California were finalizing preparations Tuesday ahead of the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday carrying a trio of Canadian-built radar observation satellites into orbit.
NASA has selected Maxar Technologies for a $375 million contract to design, build and launch the core element of a mini-space station in orbit around the moon that will double as a deep space research outpost and a staging point for future human expeditions to the lunar surface.
DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 4 commercial Earth observation satellite, which launched in 2016 for a planned 10-to-12-year mission, has suffered a failure in its control moment gyros and is no longer able to acquire high-resolution imagery, officials announced Monday.
Two Falcon 9 rockets with reused first stage boosters will place the initial block of DigitalGlobe’s commercial WorldView Legion satellite fleet in orbit in 2021, the Earth-imaging company recently announced.