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Illustration of SSO-A payload in space.
Space flight industries
SpaceX was the first to land and reuse commercial rockets capable of sending spacecraft into orbit, but the company has never used the same rocket stage more than twice. This should change Wednesday.
Elon Musk's vision for faster and less expensive launches into orbit is brought to a higher level when one of his Block 5 Falcon 9 rockets takes off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the morning. The Block 5 version of the SpaceX WorkXe rocket is designed to be reused up to 10 times or more without being refurbished. The specific reminder to be used this week was also launched in May (the first launch of Block 5) and then again in August.
The payload bay at the top of which the Falcon 9 will be overcrowded will be loaded with 64 small satellites from 34 different organizations representing 17 countries. Spaceflight Industries bought the entire Falcon 9 space for a carpooling mission called SSO-A SmallSat Express, which, according to the company, will be the largest carpool mission in the US market so far.
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The biggest steps of SpaceX
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The University of North Carolina-Wilmington, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and Capella Space Corporation are among the organizations that will have satellites aboard the rocket Wednesday.
The launch window is between 10:32 and 11:01 PT. The third historic landing of the booster will take place less than 10 minutes later on the Just Read the Instructions drone, stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
You can watch the whole mission live via the SpaceX webcast. We will integrate the live stream here when it is available. As a general rule, the broadcast begins about 15 minutes before the scheduled launch.
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