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Update at 6:31 PM ET: SpaceX has successfully launched two SES satellites into the clock 5:48 PM EST (2221 GMT) of the company’s O3b mPower network, marking the 200th mission of the SpaceX booster and the eighth flight of this Falcon 9 rocket. Watch the launch video and read our final story.
SpaceX will launch two satellites for communications company SES on Friday (December 16), and you can watch the event live.
a Falcon 9 The rocket, topped with SES’s O3b mPower 1 and 2 satellites, is scheduled to lift off from Space Force Station Cape Canaveral in Florida on Friday during an 87-minute window that opens at 4:21 p.m. EDT (2121 GMT).
Watch it live here on Space.com with permission from SpaceX or directly through the company (Opens in a new tab). Coverage is expected to begin 15 minutes prior to launch.
Related: 8 ways SpaceX has changed spaceflight
If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9 first stage will return to Earth for a soft landing on one of SpaceX’s robotic drones in the Atlantic Ocean less than nine minutes after launch.
This will be the eighth takeoff and landing for this particular booster, according to SpaceX mission description (Opens in a new tab). Four of her previous voyages were missions to the International Space Station For NASA – two crew and two uncrewed.
The Falcon 9 upper stage will continue to pull the two satellites into orbit. The first is scheduled to deploy to medium Earth orbit (MEO) 1 hour and 53 minutes after liftoff, and the second will follow seven minutes later.
O3b mPower 1 and 2 are the first two satellites of a constellation of 11 spacecraft that SES plans to collect at MEO. The satellites will provide high-throughput, low-latency communications to customers around the world, according to SES, which is headquartered in Luxembourg and France.
This mission is part of a busy stretch for SpaceX. The Japanese company launched its own Hakuto-R The Moon landed on the Moon on Sunday (December 11) and was scheduled to lift NASA’s SWOT Water Observation Satellite early Friday morning.
SpaceX also plans to launch another large batch of Starlink Internet satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which is located next to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, on Saturday (Dec. 17).
Mike Wall is the author of “Abroad (Opens in a new tab)Book (Major Grand Publishing, 2018; illustration by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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