![]() Scientists will use ground-based telescopes to measure how much the kinetic impact from DART changed the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger companion, named Didymos. The target asteroid, named Dimorphos, is about the size of a football stadium. ![]() The first-of-its-kind mission will take aim on a binary asteroid next September, guiding itself to strike the smaller of the pair. The payload for the mission is NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, mission. The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket is poised for takeoff from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 10:21:02 p.m. The seventh Galaxy is heavier than the others and will be launched by itself in the first half of 2023.A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, heading southeast over the Pacific Ocean with NASA’s DART asteroid deflection experiment. That includes two from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using another Falcon 9, and two from French Guiana, using a European Ariane rocket. The new satellites are being launched in pairs, with four more flights planned before the end of the year. "Galaxy" is a brand name for Intelsat relay stations serving North America. "They're part of a seven-satellite buy that we did in 2020 to replace some of our Galaxy satellites," Jean-Luc Froeliger, senior vice president of space systems at Intelsat, told Spaceflight Now. A view of launch from the nearby Kennedy Space Center as the Falcon 9 climbed away from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Galaxy 33 and 34 will be used by a variety of major media outlets, including HBO, the Disney channel, Starz and the Discovery channel. The satellites are the latest in an FCC-mandated drive to free up space in the radio spectrum for 5G mobile networks, requiring new satellites to replace lost capacity. Spectacular video from the SpaceX droneship - awaiting the first stage several hundred miles down range in the Atlantic Ocean - showed the rocket's second stage exhaust plume dramatically expanding in the low-pressure upper atmosphere, an eye-catching effect best seen when backlit at dawn or sunset. The rocket's first stage, making its record-tying 14th flight, landed successfully about nine minutes after liftoff. All rocket exhaust plumes expand in the low-pressure environment of the extreme upper atmosphere, but the effect is especially striking at sunrise or sunset. A remarkable view of the Falcon 9 heading toward space as seen by a camera on board a SpaceX droneship stationed several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. EDT and climbed away on a due-east trajectory over the Atlantic Ocean.Īfter dropping off the well-used first stage for recovery on a SpaceX landing barge, the rocket's upper stage propelled the two-satellite payload out of the discernible atmosphere, and released them into elliptical "transfer" orbits, as planned, about 40 minutes after launch. Using a first stage making its 14th flight - the most yet for a non-SpaceX commercial customer - the latest Falcon 9 blasted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:05 p.m. It followed two flights Wednesday, one from each coast, that were just seven hours apart. ![]() ![]() Running two days late after back-to-back scrubs, SpaceX launched a pair of Intelsat communications satellites from Cape Canaveral Saturday evening in the company's third Falcon 9 launch in as many days. ![]()
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