Rocket Lab plans to launch an Earth-observing radar satellite this morning (Dec. 20), and you can watch it live.
An Electron rocket is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand site today, during a 75-minute window that opens at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT; 3:00 a.m. on Dec. 21 local New Zealand time).
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 today’s 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.)
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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 today, 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.