SoylentNews

martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

Two Soyuz flights are scheduled for Thursday April 4 and the second flight ever of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy is planned for April 7.

The Soyuz flights will take off from two different locations. The first, which is scheduled for 11:01:35 UTC (07:01:35 EDT), is of a Soyuz-2.1a from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. According to SpaceFlightNow [spaceflightnow.com], it carries "several tons of fuel, food and supplies for the space station and its six-person crew."

The second Soyuz flight (of a Soyuz 2-1b) is scheduled for a 16:30:37 UTC (12:30:37 EDT) launch from the Guiana Space Center on the northeast coast of South America. It carries four broadband satellites for O3b Networks "which provides broadband service to developing countries."

The Falcon Heavy (FH) has flown only once before (on February 6, 2018 [soylentnews.org]) when it sent Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into an orbit that extended past Mars' orbit. The FH is comprised of 3 SpaceX Block 5 cores, each of which has 9 Merlin engines.

The upcoming Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled for April 7th/8th (launch window: 22:36-00:35 UTC). That works out to 18:36-20:35 EDT on April 7th. The flight "will launch the Arabsat 6A communications satellite for Arabsat of Saudi Arabia. Arabsat 6A will provide Ku-band and Ka-band communications coverage over the Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as a footprint in South Africa." (Information taken from SpaceFlightNow's Launch Schedule [spaceflightnow.com].)

SpaceX launches are typically live-streamed on YouTube. Check SpaceX's Channel [youtube.com] for more info.

Original Submission