All is “GO” in the final hours of the countdown to leading up to tonight’s, Dec. 21, the high stakes blastoff of an upgraded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on its ‘Return to Flight’ mission carrying a flock of commercial satellites to orbit that also features a breathtaking and history making flyback of the rockets first stage to a soft landing on the ground that could open a majestic era of Rocket Reusability – if all goes well.
Local space coast area residents might hear a sonic boom as the first stage propulsively steers back to Cape Canaveral.
The timing of Monday’s dramatic night launch of the 229 foot tall Falcon 9 rocket with a fleet of eleven commercial communications satellites for Orbcomm from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. has been revised to 8:29 p.m. EST.
Liftoff of the two stage Falcon 9 is slated for the opening of a newly revised and slight longer launch window which extends for five minutes under currently cloudy Florida skies.
You can watch the dramatic events unfold via a live SpaceX webcast available at SpaceX.com/webcast.
The SpaceX webcast is planned to start about 25 minutes before liftoff, beginning at approximately 8:10 p.m. ET on Dec. 21.
Air Force meteorologists are currently predicting an 80 percent chance of favorable weather conditions at launch time.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will deliver 11 satellites to low-Earth orbit for ORBCOMM, a leading global provider of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.
The history making landing attempt of the boosters first stage back at the Cape at Landing Zone 1 would come after high altitude separation from the upper stage and around 10 minutes after launch, and has gathered significant notoriety.
The goal is to recover and eventually reuse the boosters in order to significantly cut the cost of access to space, as often stated by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
The post SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket and Landing Zone 1 Ready for Historic Dec. 21 Blastoff – Live Webcast appeared first on Universe Today.
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