SpaceX will launch a communications satellite into orbit and land a rocket into the sea tonight, November 2, as a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Eutelsat ‘s Hotbird 13G satellite is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida tonight during a 116-minute window that opens an hour 11:26 pm EST, 05:26 am Egypt time
And if all goes according to plan, the first stage of Falcon 9 will return to Earth just under nine minutes after launch, landing on a SpaceX Just Read the Instructions drone, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It will be the sixth launch and landing for this very first stage.
The Hotbird 13G will continue to fly over the upper stage of the Falcon 9 , which will deploy the satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit about 36 minutes after liftoff, according to space .
Built by Airbus Defense and Space and operated by French telecommunications company Eutelsat , the Hotbird 13G will eventually set up shop in geostationary orbit, about 22,300 miles (35,900 km) above our planet.
The Hotbird 13G will join its twin Hotbird 13F , which launched on that patch of cosmic real estate aboard the Falcon 9 last month .
Eutelsat representatives wrote that the Hotbird satellite family “constitutes one of the largest broadcast systems in Europe, providing 1,000 TV channels to more than 160 million TV homes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East”.
The Hotbird 13G launch will be SpaceX ‘s second from the Florida Space Coast in two days, as Elon Musk ‘s company on Tuesday (November 1) launched the US Space Force ‘s USSF-44 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Using the Falcon Heavy missile , the USSF -44 , today’s most powerful flight launcher, was the fourth mission ever for the Falcon Heavy and the first since June 2019.
