SpaceX is ready to launch some late New Year’s fireworks on Tuesday on a mission to fly 114 different satellites into orbit to begin 2023.
a Falcon 9 missile from SpaceX The company’s epic Transporter-6 mission will launch at 9:56 AM EST (1456 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida. You can watch the launch live here on Space.com in a live stream brought to you by EOS Data Analytics (EOSDA).
The Transporter-6 mission will launch EOS SAT-1 for EOSDA on this mission; This is the first of seven agriculture-focused satellites for the company’s new constellation. EOS SAT-1 will be the last of 114 satellites deployed during the Transporter-6 mission, according to SpaceX’s mission schedule.
“This launch brings new game-changing possibilities from satellite technologies to the agricultural industry. EOSDA will now work with its datasets to deliver deeper and more accurate insights to its customers and partners,” EOSDA CEO Artiom Anisimov said in a statement.
Related: 8 Ways SpaceX Transformed Spaceflight Forever
EOS SAT-1 is designed to scan 386,000 miles (one million square kilometers) per day using 11 bands of light. Examining crop health in this way is expected to allow farmers to better customize their crop care, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption and water use, among other benefits.
The full EOS SAT fleet, when ready around 2025, will aim to look at 4.6 million square miles (12 million square kilometers) per day, which is about a third more than the equivalent area in the United States. The ESA statement added that the seven satellites, built by Dragonfly Aerospace, aim to reach 100 percent of the countries “with the largest areas of agricultural land and forests”.
There are other satellite crops that will be flying into space aboard Transporter-6 as well. For example, Spire Global Plans to launch six satellites (Opens in a new tab) To expand the marine and air traffic to observe the constellation using ADS-B technology.
Spaceflight Inc. Plans to build four Kleos spacecraft (Opens in a new tab) to a sun-synchronous orbit that maintains consistent lighting conditions below the fleet. Kleos scans radio-frequency transmissions from space to look for “hidden and illegal activity,” It mentions its website (Opens in a new tab).
The Transporter mission series is “custom flights,” meaning it features what may be dozens of small satellites flying into space aboard a single Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX hasn’t confirmed the full statement for Transporter-6 on its website. The first mission of the series, Transporter-1, has been launched A record number of 143 satellites On January 24, 2021.
A Transporter-6 Falcon 9 rocket is passing through a first stage, making its 15th flight. The booster has previously launched SpaceX’s Transporter-2 rideshare mission, three commercial satellite flights and 10 Starlink satellite missions, SpaceX said. If all goes well, the booster should return to the landing pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for landing.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller (Opens in a new tab)? (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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