SpaceX is set to launch its first Falcon Heavy rocket in more than a year and a half Monday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, sending the six-metric-ton ViaSat-3 Flight 3 communications satellite toward geosynchronous transfer orbit. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A is scheduled for 10:21 a.m. EDT, or 1421 UTC, with an 85-minute window.
The launch will be the 12th flight of a Falcon Heavy rocket and comes after a long pause for SpaceX’s biggest booster. The rocket will fly east, and the 45th Weather Squadron is forecasting a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions during the window, though meteorologists are watching the cumulus cloud and surface electric fields rules.
Two side boosters will again do the heavy lifting. Booster 1072 is flying for a second time and booster 1075 for the 22nd, with both set to separate from the center core and target landings at Landing Zone 2 and Landing Zone 40. SpaceX will not try to recover center core B1098, which will be expended into the Atlantic Ocean.
The mission is also the latest chapter in a program that has been building for more than 10 years. Dave Abrahamian said the company expects orbit raising to the operating position at 158.55 degrees East along the equator to take about two months after the satellite is dropped off nearly five hours after liftoff.
Abrahamian said the satellite should separate in an orbit just below geostationary Earth orbit apogee-wise, about 23,000 kilometers perigee-wise and with only about three degrees of inclination, making it well suited for electric propulsion. He said Falcon Heavy is a more powerful vehicle than Atlas 5 was, which allows a more favorable transfer orbit for that process.
For Viasat, the launch marks a turning point after years of work on the program. Abrahamian said the company has already launched two ViaSat-3 satellites and now has the third one ready to go, calling it a different world from when the effort began. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, first launched in 2018, has flown 11 times before this mission.
The satellite’s ride to orbit, and the booster’s return attempts, will offer a fresh test of a rocket that has spent much of the past year and a half on the sidelines. If the weather cooperates, Monday’s spacex falcon heavy launch will put one of the company’s most powerful rockets back to work on a mission built for the long haul.