SpaceX Launch Today, Second in Less Than Two Weeks

SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit today, carrying a Turkmenistan communications satellite. The 90-minute launch window opens at 22:14 UTC Monday night (6:14 p.m. Eastern time).

You can watch the launch live on the SpaceX LiveStream channel, NASA TV, and NASA’s Ustream channel. I will live tweet it, too.

Before you ask, there will not be an attempted landing of the first stage booster for this launch. The satellite being launched is going into a geostationary orbit, 40,000 kilometers up, and a lot of fuel is needed to get it there. There won’t be enough left to slow the first stage and land it, so it’ll drop into the Atlantic.

I think the most remarkable thing about this launch is that (if it goes off on time) the most recent Falcon 9 launch was only 13 days previous (on Tuesday, April 14). That’s an incredibly fast turnaround time for a company, and a day faster than its previous record of 14 days set last year.

For more info, I recommend this amazingly detailed America Space article. It answered many of the things I was wondering about for this launch. SpaceX also has a PDF press kit with highlights as well.

If the launch is scrubbed (weather may play a factor today) then it is scheduled for the next attempt Tuesday also at 22:14 UTC.

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