Rocket Lab plans to launch an Earth-observing satellite tv for pc for the corporate BlackSky tonight (Might 28), and you’ll watch the motion reside.
An Electron rocket is scheduled to raise off from Rocket Lab‘s New Zealand website right now at 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT and 1:15 p.m. New Zealand time on Might 29), carrying a “Gen-3” satellite tv for pc for Virginia-based BlackSky towards low Earth orbit (LEO).
Rocket Lab will stream the launch reside, starting half-hour earlier than liftoff. You possibly can watch reside through the corporate and right here at House.com if, as anticipated, Rocket Lab makes the webcast obtainable.
The mission, which Rocket Lab calls “Full Stream Forward,” will ship the Gen-3 satellite tv for pc to a round orbit 292 miles (470 kilometers) above Earth.
As soon as there, the spacecraft “will be a part of the rest of the corporate’s constellation delivering very high-resolution imagery and AI-enabled analytics for each day intelligence operations,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description.
“‘Full Stream Forward’ is the second in a collection of 4 Electron launches booked by BlackSky to deploy its Gen-3 satellites to orbit this 12 months, and the tenth general [Electron] launch for the corporate — making Electron probably the most prolific launcher for his or her constellation so far,” Rocket Lab added.
Tonight’s launch would be the seventh of 2025 and the sixty fifth general flight for the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which supplies small satellites devoted rides to orbit.
Rocket Lab additionally flies a suborbital variant of Electron generally known as HASTE, which serves as a testbed for hypersonic applied sciences. The corporate can also be growing a bigger, extra highly effective orbital rocket referred to as Neutron, which is designed to be partially reusable. Neutron is predicted to debut later this 12 months.
