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Zorro

(15,690 posts)
Mon Jun 24, 2019, 07:28 PM Jun 2019

SpaceX hopes to impress the Air Force with its 'most difficult launch ever' [View all]

Source: LA Times

SpaceX is set to carry two dozen satellites into space Monday night aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket and spread them across the sky in a marathon mission that Chief Executive Elon Musk has described as the company’s “most difficult launch ever.”

The launch, commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, is scheduled for 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time (8:30 p.m. PT) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

If successful, it could bolster SpaceX’s case to win more Air Force contracts to launch sensitive military satellites.

A new batch of the contracts is up for grabs, and Hawthorne-based SpaceX is competing against longtime rival United Launch Alliance — a joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. — as well as Northrop Grumman Corp. and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which have never launched military satellites.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-falcon-heavy-stp-2-launch-20190624-story.html



This launch is not only SpaceX's most difficult launch ever, but probably the most difficult satellite deployment ever attempted. The upper stage will be releasing multiple satellites at three different altitudes and inclinations.
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