There’s an 80 percent chance of favorable weather for the targeted 10:29 a.m. liftoff, at the opening of a 44-minute window at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 40.
The mission is one of three in quick succession this month, along with two by United Launch Alliance.
ULA’s Delta IV Heavy rocket on Saturday blasted off with a U.S. intelligence satellite on the mission's second attempt in three days, while an Atlas V is being prepared for a June 24 liftoff with a Navy communications satellite.
SpaceX’s mission is the second of two for Paris-based Eutelsat and Bermuda-based ABS, following the first in March 2015. After liftoff, SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9's first stage on a ship down range in the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to stick the landing on a fourth consecutive flight.
Falcon re-flight
SpaceX hopes to re-fly a rocket for the first time this fall.
“Aiming for first reflight in Sept/Oct,” CEO Elon Musk said last week on Twitter.
SpaceX has successfully recovered four boosters since December. The first will go on display at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and of the rest, the one landed on a ship in April is believed to be in the best condition so far.
Musk said immediately after that launch that he believed he could line up a customer for the launch, which he though was possible as soon as June.
The date has slipped a bit, and SpaceX hasn’t yet revealed what will fly on the used Falcon 9.
Making rockets reusable is key to SpaceX’s goal to lower launch costs and make human missions to Mars more feasible, possibly as soon as the mid-2020s.
Musk, Carter meet
A meeting Wednesday between SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter generated widespread media attention.
The Pentagon said Carter wanted to talk to Musk about innovation, and would be sensitive to policies limiting any discussion related to contracts.
SpaceX recently won it first contract from the Air Force to launch a national security mission, a Global Positioning System satellite, in 2018.
Details of about their discussion were not disclosed.
“Something about a flying metal suit...,” Musk joked in a tweet.
Musk has been cited as Robert Downey Jr.’s inspiration for the character Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies, and made an appearance in “Iron Man 2.”
BEAM ingress
NASA astronaut Jeff Williams on Monday became the first person to enter an inflatable habitat in space.
Wearing a mask and headlamp, Williams opened the hatch and floated inside the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, which launched to the International Space Station in April and was inflated last month.
According to NASA TV, Williams reported that the module looked “pristine,” with no evidence of condensation inside, and felt cold inside (it was 44 degrees Fahrenheit).
Over several days, Williams took air samples, checked that air tanks were empty, and helped install sensors that will monitor radiation and temperature levels and any debris strikes.
The BEAM, designed by Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, is a two-year project testing technology that could be the foundation for a future private space station or deep space habitat.
Departing ISS
Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo craft is due to leave the International Space Station Tuesday morning.
Hours later, a fire will be lit inside the unmanned ship as part of a first-of-its kind experiment seeking to learn more about how fire spreads in microgravity.
The Saffire experiment will ignite a piece of fabric contained in a box. The Cygnus itself will burn up during its re-entry into the atmosphere eight days later.
The departing Cygnus is the second of two launched from Cape Canaveral by Atlas V rockets while Orbital ATK redesigned its own Antares rocket following an October 2014 failure.
A new Cygnus is being prepared for a July launch from Virginia on the Antares, which recently completed a test-firing of its new Russian RD-181 main engines.
Orbital ATK last week announced it has named the next Cygnus in honor of the late NASA astronaut Alan “Dex” Poindexter, who died in a 2012 accident involving a personal watercraft off Florida’s Gulf Coast.
A few days after the Cygnus leaves, three station crew members will head back to Earth. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA’s Tim Kopra, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan at 5:15 a.m. ET next Saturday, June 18.
DiBello to discuss “Vision 2025”
Space Florida President and CEO Frank DiBello on Tuesday will discuss his vision for the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in a presentation to the National Space Club Florida Committee at the Radisson at the Port in Cape Canaveral.
The space club recently bestowed DiBello with its most prestigious annual honor recognizing contributions to Florida’s space industry, the Debus Award, named for Kennedy Space Center’s first director. Visit www.nscfl.org for more information.
By: James Dean (Florida Today).
Photo: Space Flight 101.
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