Rocket Lab is scheduled to launch an Earth observation radar satellite this morning (December 20th), and you can watch it live.
The Electron rocket is scheduled to launch today from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand location during a 75-minute period beginning at 9:00 a.m. EDT (14:00 GMT, 3:00 a.m. New Zealand local time on December 21).
rocket lab is Webcast the action livebegins 20 minutes before takeoff. Space.com plans to broadcast the stream if, as expected, the company makes it available.
Rocket Lab is calling today’s mission “Owl The Way Up,” after the payload, one of Japanese company Synspective’s Strix radar imaging satellites. (Strix is a widespread genus of owls.)
Related: Rocket Lab launches five IoT satellites on groundbreaking 50th mission (video)
Synspective will build the Strix constellation, a system of “Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites designed to deliver images that can detect millimeter-level changes in the Earth’s surface from space” in low Earth orbit. A total of 16 Electron launches were booked. Rocket Lab writes: Mission description.
“Owl The Way Up” will be the sixth of these 16 flying missions.
If all goes according to plan today, Electron will deploy the Strix satellite about 54.5 minutes after liftoff. The goal is a circular orbit 357 miles (574 kilometers) above Earth.
Rocket Lab has launched a total of 54 Electron missions to date, 13 of which will take place this year. The company also conducted three flights with HASTE, a suborbital version of the Electron that serves as a testbed for hypersonic technology.
