SpaceX plans to launch a brand new Earth-observation satellite tv for pc together with a number of smaller spacecraft from California on Tuesday (Aug. 26), and you’ll watch it stay.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying Luxembourg’s National Advanced Optical System (NAOS) spacecraft is scheduled to carry off throughout a 27-minute window that opens at 2:53 p.m. EDT (1853 GMT or 11:53 a.m. PDT native) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
SpaceX is planning to webcast the mission starting about quarter-hour previous to launch. You can watch it right here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or straight by way of the corporate’s website or its account on the X social media community.
In addition to NOAS, which was constructed for Luxembourg by the corporate OHB Italia, the Falcon 9 will loft small satellites for Dhruva Space (LEAP-1); the San Francisco-based firm Planet (Pelican-3 and Pelican-4); and Exolaunch (Capella’s Acadia-6 and Pixxel’s FFLY-1, FFLY-2, and FFLY-3).
If all goes to plan, NAOS might be deployed about 12 minutes into the flight, with the secondary payloads following over the following hour.
LEAP-1 (or Launching Expeditions for Aspiring Payloads-1) is comprised of two demonstrations, together with a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) module and a hyperspectral imager. The Pelican satellites will join Planet’s Earth-imaging constellation.
The Acadia and FFLY nanosats are also commercial observation platforms, the former featuring synthetic aperture radar technology and the latter high-frequency hyperspectral imaging.
Once spent, the Falcon 9’s first stage will land back at Landing Zone-4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg. If successful, it will be the booster’s (B1063) 27th recovery.
This launch will be SpaceX’s 104th Falcon 9 mission of 2025 and the 522nd Falcon 9 launch since 2010.