On Thursday, December 8, SpaceX will launch a sizable number of internet satellites for the communications firm OneWeb, and you can watch the launch live online.
At 5:27 p.m. EST on Thursday, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 40 OneWeb satellites is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida (2227 GMT).
Watch it live here at Space.com thanks to SpaceX, or go to the company’s website directly (opens in new tab).
The estimated start time for coverage is 15 minutes before to liftoff.
If all goes as planned, the Falcon 9’s first stage will return for a landing at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station less than eight minutes after liftoff.
According to a SpaceX mission description, this specific booster will be launched and landed for the fourth time (opens in new tab).
Previously, it launched one batch of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13F spacecraft, and a SpaceX Dragon supply mission to the International Space Station for NASA in December 2021.
The OneWeb satellites will continue to be sent into orbit by the Falcon 9’s upper stage. The OneWeb satellites will continue to be sent into orbit by the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
The spacecraft will be launched by the Falcon 9 in three relatively equal stages, starting 58 minutes after launch and finishing 30 minutes later.
In low Earth orbit, OneWeb is constructing a 648-satellite broadband constellation that will compete in certain ways with SpaceX’s Starlink.
To date, more than 460 OneWeb satellites have been launched into orbit, the vast majority of them atop Soyuz rockets made in Russia and run by the French company Arianespace.
This arrangement broke down after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, delaying OneWeb’s launch.
The business filled it quickly by signing agreements with SpaceX and New Space India Limited (NSIL).
(Those contracts’ terms have not been made public.)
The first launch under the NSIL agreement took place on October 21 when 36 OneWeb spacecraft were successfully launched by an Indian GSLV Mark III rocket.
The first OneWeb flight for SpaceX will take place on Thursday.
Originally slated for Tuesday (Dec. 6), Thursday’s liftoff was postponed by SpaceX in order to do further checks, as Elon Musk’s business has recently done with a number of its Falcon 9 rockets.
“Out There” (opens in new tab), written by Mike Wall and illustrated by Karl Tate, was published by Grand Central Publishing in 2018.
On Twitter, he is @michaeldwall (opens in new tab).
Follow us on Facebook or Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab).
