Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband megaconstellation continues to develop.
Twenty-four extra Project Kuiper satellites are scheduled to take flight on Saturday (Oct. 11), lifting off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 8:51 p.m. EDT (0051 GMT on Oct. 12).
You’ll be able to watch the action live via SpaceX, starting about quarter-hour earlier than launch.
It shall be SpaceX’s third Project Kuiper launch and the sixth total devoted to constructing out the nascent community, which is able to finally include about 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). So far, 129 of them have reached the ultimate frontier.
The relaxation shall be lofted on greater than 70 extra launches carried out by quite a lot of rockets — the Falcon 9, Arianespace’s Ariane 6, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur.
If all goes to plan Saturday, the 24 Kuiper craft shall be deployed by the Falcon 9’s higher stage at an altitude of 289 miles (465 kilometers), over a 7.5-minute stretch that begins 56.5 minutes after liftoff.
“From there, we perform initial satellite health checks and prepare to raise the satellites to their assigned altitude of 392 miles (630 km), where they will be fully commissioned as part of our operational satellite constellation,” Amazon representatives wrote in a mission description.
As on just about each SpaceX launch, there shall be motion within the downward path on Saturday as properly: The Falcon 9’s first stage will contact down within the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX droneship “Just Read the Instructions” a bit of over eight minutes after liftoff.
It would be the second launch and touchdown for this specific booster, according to SpaceX. The automobile first flew Aug. 11 on one other Project Kuiper launch, which occurred to be SpaceX’s a centesimal mission of the 12 months.
Project Kuiper is not the one broadband megaconstellation below development in LEO. SpaceX’s Starlink community already options greater than 8,500 operational spacecraft, and it is rising on a regular basis; SpaceX has launched greater than 90 Starlink missions thus far this 12 months alone.
And China is constructing two megaconstellations of its personal, Guowang (“National Network”) and Qianfan (“Thousand Sails”), every of which is able to host about 13,000 satellites, if all goes to plan.