A Rocket Lab Electron vehicle is scheduled to send two Earth observation satellites to the American company BlackSky today, April 2, at 8:10 a.m. EDT (1210 GMT) from the Rocket Lab site in New Zealand. You will be able to watch it live on this page, courtesy of Rocket Lab, starting approximately 20 minutes before disembarkation. You can also watch it directly from the Rocket Lab website. Rocket Lab originally planned to launch the mission on Friday before a successful SpaceX rocket launch, but announced a flight delay late Thursday. “We are now aiming for a launch on April 2 to avoid bad weather,” Rocket Lab wrote in a Twitter post. The Electron is perpendicular to Pad A in Launch Complex 1 for the #WithoutMissionABeatTarget T-0: 🚀UTC | 12:14, 02 April ZNZDT | 01:14, 03 April 🚀EDT | 08:14, 02 April 🚀PDT | 05:14, 02 April pic.twitter.com/2L5yLEqeEKApril 2, 2022 See more The Rocket Lab launch, dubbed “Without Mission a Beat”, will be the 25th electron launch in total. If all goes according to plan, it will increase the number of satellites delivered to orbit by the California-based Rocket Lab to 112, according to a description of the company’s mission. Rocket Lab is working to make the first stage of the two-stage Electron reusable, reducing amplifiers for soft ocean launches and recoveries on many previous missions. However, there will be no such activities in “Without Mission a Beat”. The Rocket Lab launch is the second in two days for commercial space companies. On Friday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Station, which carried 40 satellites into orbit for various customers, weather permitting. The first stage of the Falcon 9 returned to Earth shortly after takeoff and landed on an autonomous droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. The first stage of the Falcon 9 that flew on Friday completed the seventh launch and landing on the mission. The two launches on Friday and Saturday are part of a busy and exciting weekend for space lovers. Friday also marks the start of a three-day “liquid clothing rehearsal” for NASA Artemis 1 mission, which will use a huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to send an unmanned Orion capsule around the moon. During Wet dress rehearsal, members of the Artemis 1 team will go through many of the pre-release processes, including the SLS feed. If all goes well with the test, Artemis 1 could take off as early as May or June. Editor’s note: This story, originally published on Thursday, has been updated to reflect Rocket Lab’s April 2 launch delay due to weather. Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or up Facebook.
