The first Falcon 9 flight of 2016 is ready for takeoff Sunday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and these photos show the rocket positioned on its launch mount overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with the Jason 3 satellite, a joint project between European and U.S. weather agencies to monitor wave height and sea level in the world’s oceans.
Meteorologists predict mostly sunny skies, mild temperatures and light winds Sunday for the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Central Coast with a $364 million oceanography satellite for U.S. and European science institutions.
The pre-launch news conference for the Jason 3 ocean altimetry mission, scheduled for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. (Membership required.)
The Falcon 9 booster that dramatically flew back to Earth last month following a commercial satellite launch ignited again Friday in a hold-down test at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral launch pad, days before the company is due to launch its next mission from California, officials said.
An unpiloted space plane developed by Sierra Nevada Corp. will join cargo carriers built by SpaceX and Orbital ATK to resupply the International Space Station beginning in 2019, NASA announced Thursday.
Orbital ATK and SpaceX won Pentagon contracts worth a combined value of up to $241 million Wednesday in public-private partnerships crafted to hasten the U.S. military’s move away from Russian-supplied propulsion to deliver national security satellites to orbit.
The Jason 3 oceanography satellite, a joint project between U.S. and European weather agencies, is closed up inside the nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket awaiting launch from California’s Central Coast on Sunday.
SpaceX’s launch team ran through a traditional preflight test Monday, putting a Falcon 9 rocket through a mock countdown, loading it with propellant and briefly firing its nine engines on a launch pad in California ahead of this weekend’s liftoff with a U.S.-European oceanography satellite.