SpaceX is gearing up for a pair of Falcon 9 launches on Thursday, hours after it labored with NASA to relocate its Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Worldwide House Station. First as much as launch is a pair of Maxar House Methods’ WorldView Legion satellites.
Liftoff from House Launch Advanced 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg House Power Base is about for 11:36 a.m. PDT (2:36 p.m. EDT, 1836 UTC), which is the opening of a 14-minute window.
Spaceflight Now could have stay protection starting about half-hour previous to liftoff.
The primary stage booster supporting this mission, B1061, can be launching for a twentieth time, changing into the third booster to succeed in this milestone. It beforehand launched two astronaut missions (Crew-1 and Crew-2), two smallsat rideshare missions (Transporter-4 and Transporter-5) in addition to 9 Starlink missions.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1061 will landing again at Touchdown Zone 4 (LZ-4). This would be the 18th touchdown up to now at LZ-4 and the 303rd booster touchdown for SpaceX.
Final week, SpaceX famous that it was within the strategy of qualifying its Falcon boosters for as much as 40 flights.
We’re working towards qualifying our fleet of Falcon boosters and fairings to help 40 missions every. Rising Falcon’s flight depend supplies worthwhile info on repeated reuse, a essential factor for making life multiplanetary with Starship
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 28, 2024
Right here’s lookin’ at you, Earth
Onboard the Falcon 9 are a pair of WorldView Legion satellites. These are the primary two of a deliberate six-satellite constellation for Maxar. As soon as all six of those Earth-observing satellites are on orbit, they are going to enable Maxar’s prospects to revisit views of a specific location as much as 15 instances per day.
The present satellites the corporate has on-orbit are in a position to revisit a website two instances per day.
Maxar’s WorldView Legion satellites are constructed on the primary of the corporate’s Maxar 500 Collection satellite tv for pc buses. They’re described as “a mid-size platform that may be tailor-made for a number of missions and orbits.”
“WorldView Legion and the Maxar 500 sequence platform is the end result of many years of expertise in constructing satellites for buyer missions,” mentioned Chris Johnson, Maxar House Methods CEO, in a press release. “We’re excited to succeed in this necessary program milestone and stay up for continued partnership on this system.”
The corporate partnered with Raytheon Missiles and Protection to develop the instrument suite onboard the satellite tv for pc. Will probably be in a position to view the Earth in what Maxar describes “30 cm-class imagery”
“Whereas the multispectral bands are just like what our present satellites present, what’s new on WorldView Legion is that our groups have extra management to show every band individually,” Maxar mentioned in a press release. “These enhancements enable prospects to extra simply decide what objects on the bottom are manufactured from utilizing our satellite tv for pc imagery. For instance, we are able to extra simply distinguish what’s vegetation versus what’s artifical materials. These enhancements additionally decrease sensitivity to water vapor.”
Maxar additionally markets its expertise as a approach to increase different U.S. nationwide safety belongings on orbit. It factors to its means to observe “the event of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities in North Korea and Iran” in addition to providing what it calls Vessel Detection Companies (VDS).
We’re lower than 24 hours from launching our first two WorldView Legion satellites! The mission patch features a nod to our launch supplier, @SpaceX, and @RTX_News, who manufactured our instrument! Particulars: https://t.co/IuiDZPljWY#ittakesalegion pic.twitter.com/H0lPO4SNJU
— Maxar Applied sciences (@Maxar) May 1, 2024
Dragons and Falcons flying
Along with launching the WorldView Legion satellites, SpaceX was additionally busy each on the Worldwide House Station and over in Florida.
At 8:51 a.m. EDT (1251 UTC), SpaceX and NASA undocked the Crew Dragon Endeavour from the ahead port of the Concord module to shift it to the zenith (space-facing) port. Bodily separation from the ISS occurred at 8:57 a.m. EDT (1257 UTC).
The relocation course of took about an hour. Gentle seize was confirmed at 9:46 a.m. EDT (1346 UTC).
In the meantime, one other SpaceX workforce was making ready to launch a batch of Starlink satellites onboard one other Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral House Power Station. The Starlink 6-55 mission is about to be the thirtieth devoted flight for SpaceX’s rising low Earth orbit constellation.
The @SpaceX #Dragon crew spacecraft is now focused to redock to a brand new station port at 9:41am ET in the present day. Watch stay… pic.twitter.com/zNtsuAkY8Y
— Worldwide House Station (@Space_Station) May 2, 2024
