An Atlas V rocket lifted off Tuesday night (October 4) from Florida’s area coast, carrying two industrial communications satellites into orbit.
The Atlas V, topped by twin spacecraft SES-20 and SES-21, launched Tuesday at 5:36 p.m. EDT (2136 GMT) from Cape Canaveral House Power Station.
The 196-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket hit all of its targets early. It jettisoned its three strong rocket boosters about 2 minutes after liftoff as scheduled, for instance, and discarded its payload fairing, which protected the 2 satellites throughout launch, about 1.5 minutes later. And the 2 levels of Atlas V separated at about T+4.5 minutes.
Associated: The historical past of rockets
Let’s take off once more! #AtlasV #SES20 #[email protected]_Satellites pic.twitter.com/uDh70XTCadOctober 4, 2022
However there’s nonetheless a variety of work to do, because the rocket’s Centaur higher stage nonetheless must feed to the deployment locations of SES-20 and SES-21 – near-circular, near-geosynchronous orbits above the Earth. Earth.
If all goes as deliberate, SES-20 will deploy about 5 hours and 40 minutes after liftoff, and SES-21 will observe about 40 minutes later. The 2 spacecraft will then use their onboard propulsion methods to circularize their orbits, which can ship them zooming round Earth about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) above the equator, in line with a Description of the ULA mission (opens in a brand new tab).
As soon as the satellites are established in these orbits and have gone via a verification interval, SES-20 and SES-21 can start doing what they have been constructed to do: present tv broadcasting service throughout the USA for the Luxembourg telecommunications firm SES.
“Constructed by Boeing with 1000’s of slender, steerable beams and the flexibility to isolate sources of interference, the 2 spacecraft provide SES and future clients the flexibility to increase, prolong and even modify the world protection and the mission of a satellite tv for pc all through its life,” the ULA representatives wrote. within the job description.
“Confirmed {hardware} mixed with next-generation expertise has created an reasonably priced, light-weight spacecraft, permitting two satellites to launch on a single rocket,” they added.
The Atlas V launch is a part of a busy week of spaceflight. For instance, SpaceX plans to launch the Crew-5 Astronaut Mission for NASA and one other batch of the corporate Stellar Hyperlink Web satellites on two separate missions on Wednesday (October 5), in addition to two telecommunications satellites for the corporate Intelsat on Thursday (October 6).
Three different missions are additionally scheduled for Thursday, October 6, together with one rocket lab launch that can ship a satellite tv for pc constructed by the vitality and expertise firm Normal Atomics into orbit.
Editor’s notice: This story was up to date at 6:15 p.m. EDT Oct. 4 with information of the profitable liftoff.
Mike Wall is the writer of “The low (opens in a brand new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a guide in regards to the seek for extraterrestrial life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a brand new tab). Observe us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a brand new tab) Or on Fb (opens in a brand new tab).