Rocket Lab plans to launch an Earth-observing radar satellite, and you can watch it live when a new launch date is set.
An Electron rocket was scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab‘s New Zealand site on Dec. 20, but was scrubbed with less than 20 minutes remaining in the countdown. “We are standing down from today’s launch attempt for Synspective to take a closer look at sensor data,” the company posted on Xfollowing the scrub.
When a new launch date is set, Rocket Lab will webcast the action live, beginning 20 minutes before liftoff. Space.com will air the stream if, as expected, the company makes it available.
Rocket Lab calls this mission “Owl The Way Up,” a reference to the payload one of Japanese company Synspective’s Strix radar-imaging satellites. (Strix is a widespread genus of owls.)
Synspective has booked a total of 16 Electron launches to build out the Strix constellation in low Earth orbit, a system of “synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites designed to deliver imagery that can detect millimeter-level changes to the Earth’s surface from space,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description.
“Owl The Way Up” will be the sixth of these 16 missions to fly.
If all goes according to plan, the Electron will deploy the Strix satellite about 54.5 minutes after launch. The target is a circular orbit 357 miles (574 kilometers) above Earth.
Rocket Lab has launched a total of 54 Electron missions to date, 13 of them this year. The company has also conducted three flights with HASTE, a suborbital version of Electron that serves as a testbed for hypersonic technology.
Source: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/watch-rocket-lab-launch-a-private-earth-imaging-satellite-this-morning
