Rocket Lab will launch a private Earth-observing radar satellite on Friday (Aug. 2), and you can watch it live.
An Electron vehicle is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site Friday during a two-hour window that opens at 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT; 4:15 a.m. on Aug. 3 New Zealand time). The launch was originally targeted for Tuesday (July 30), but bad weather pushed it back a few days.
Rocket Lab will stream the launch live, beginning about 30 minutes before the window opens. You can watch here at Space.com courtesy of the company.
A Rocket Lab Electron vehicle stands on the pad ahead of the planned July 30 launch of the "Owl for One, One for Owl mission." (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
Friday's launch will send one of Japanese company Synspective's Strix synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites to low Earth orbit. "Strix" is a widespread genus of owls, which explains the name that Rocket Lab has given to the mission: "Owl for One, One for Owl."
Synspective's constellation is "designed to deliver imagery that can detect millimeter-level changes to the Earth's surface from space," Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description . This constellation is in progress; it will be built via 16 Electron launches, four of which have already taken place.
If all goes according to plan on Friday, the Strix satellite will be deployed into a circular orbit 337 miles (543 kilometers) above Earth about 57 minutes after liftoff.
Rocket Lab is working to make the first stage of the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron reusable. The company has recovered boosters from the ocean on multiple previous missions, for example, and has even reflown an engine .
But we shouldn't expect such activities on "Owl for One, One for Owl;" Rocket Lab's mission description doesn't mention anything about a booster recovery.
Editor's note: This story was updated at noon ET on July 31 with news of the new target launch date of Aug. 2.
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