SpaceX-NASA launch overnight: Everything to know about ISS resupply launch from Cape Canaveral
SpaceX and NASA are teaming up on an early morning resupply mission Monday, April 21, to transport about 6,700 pounds of supplies up to the International Space Station inside a Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX is targeting 4:15 a.m. EDT Monday to launch a Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Expect pre-dawn Central Florida sonic booms: After soaring skyward along a northeasterly trajectory, the rocket's first-stage booster will return to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The Dragon should arrive and dock autonomously with the ISS about 8:20 a.m. Tuesday, April 22. NASA astronaut and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi will monitor the capsule's arrival from the orbiting outpost.
Check back for live FLORIDA TODAY Space Team launch coverage updates on this page, starting about two hours before the launch target time. When NASA's live webcast kicks off about 3:55 a.m. Monday, we'll post it below alongside our countdown clock.
Then Monday night, a second Falcon 9 should launch the Bandwagon-3 satellite rideshare mission during a window extending from 8:43 p.m. to 9:23 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — making for a doubleheader launch day.
Countdown Timer
For the latest news and launch schedule from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX-NASA rocket launch overnight: What to know before ISS liftoff
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Digital Trends
5 hours ago
- Digital Trends
SpaceX will launch 4 humans to orbit on Tuesday. Here's how to watch
This week will see the fourth crewed launch by private firm Axiom Space. The Texas-based astronaut mission company is again partnering with SpaceX to launch four astronauts from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 8, in the Ax-4 mission. The crew will head to the International Space Station (ISS), where they'll spend around two weeks living and working alongside the orbital outpost's current inhabitants. The Ax-4 crew includes members from India, Poland, and Hungary, marking each nation's first mission to the space station in history and second government-sponsored human spaceflight mission in over 40 years. Shubhanshu Shukla will be India's first national astronaut to go to space since 1984; Sławosz Uznański will be the first Polish astronaut to reach orbit since 1978; and Hungarian Tibor Kapu will be the first person from his country to head to space since 1980. The fourth crewmember, American Peggy Whitson, will command her second commercial human spaceflight mission, which will add to her record for the longest cumulative time in space by a U.S. astronaut. 'This historic mission underscores how Axiom Space is redefining the pathway to low-Earth orbit and elevating national space programs globally,' Axiom said prior to Tuesday's launch. Besides organizing privately funded crewed missions to the ISS, Axiom also has a contract with NASA to develop and attach modules to the space station, with plans for these modules to later form a free-flying commercial space station. How to watch SpaceX is targeting 8:22 a.m. ET on Tuesday, June 10, for Falcon 9's launch of Axiom Space's Ax-4 mission to the ISS from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If for whatever reason the launch is unable to proceed, a backup opportunity is available at 8 a.m. ET on Wednesday, June 11. A live webcast of the Ax-4 mission will begin at around 6:20 a.m. ET. You can watch it via the video player embedded at the top of this page. For the latest mission updates, check SpaceX's X account.
CNN
8 hours ago
- CNN
New tech reveals never-before-seen details in solar corona
A breakthrough in adaptive optics technology captured the clearest images to date of the sun's corona. The incredible resolution of the new images could provide new insights on some of the mysteries surrounding our star.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Mars by 2026? The 4 key takeaways from Elon Musk's Starship update
SpaceX's billionaire founder Elon Musk says that despite Starship setbacks, the space company hasn't taken its eyes off the ball — and that ball is big, red, and roughly 140 million miles away. In a 42-minute video posted to X on Thursday evening, Musk laid out a plan to launch the mammoth spacecraft to Mars for the first time as early as next year. His ultimate vision has been to use a fleet of Starships to send 1 million humans to Mars by 2050. To be clear, he doesn't just want to visit the planet; he wants to establish a permanent, independent city there. The new timeline is hard to fathom, especially for those who watched another Starship prototype explode this week. Though the ship reached space during the test, it failed to achieve many of its goals. Musk has earned a reputation for wildly underestimating schedules — he once aimed to send an uncrewed ship to Mars by 2018 — but that didn't stop him from presenting yet another ambitious timeline. "If we have two planets, we keep going," he said. "We can be out there among the stars, making science fiction no longer fiction." Here are the key takeaways from Musk's latest Mars update: SEE ALSO: Listen to the eerie sounds of Mars recorded by a NASA rover Elon Musk gave a presentation called "The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary." Credit: SpaceX / X screenshot Musk is now targeting late 2026 for the first uncrewed Starship flight to Mars, taking advantage of an orbital alignment that would shorten the journey between planets. The ship would arrive seven to nine months later in 2027. Musk considers the odds of launching in that upcoming window to be about 50-50. If SpaceX misses it, the next opportunity wouldn't come for another two years. In order to head to Mars that soon, SpaceX first has to master how to refuel a Starship in low-Earth orbit, after it has already blasted off the planet — something that, by the way, has never been done before. Though the first flight won't carry people, SpaceX still intends to put some butts in seats. The "crew" will consist of humanoid Optimus robots, built by Musk's electric car company, Tesla. During his talk, Musk presented some renderings of the sci-fi robots, including one meant as an homage to the famous Lunch atop a Skyscraper photo, with Optimuses (Optimi?) sitting together on a steel beam. "That would be an epic picture to see Optimus walking around on the surface of Mars," he said. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft looked at Arcadia, a region with ice, in 2001. Credit: NASA / JPL / Arizona State University SpaceX is looking at several potential areas on Mars where Starship could land, but the lead candidate so far is a region known as Arcadia, which also happens to be the name of one of Musk's children. It's one of the few regions where lots of shallow ice exists relatively near the Martian equator, according to NASA. SpaceX will be prioritizing a location that isn't close to the poles, has ice as a source for water, and isn't too mountainous for the rockets, Musk said. With each Mars alignment launch window, SpaceX wants to increase its cadence of flights. To do that, they'll need a lot more rockets and ships. Right now the SpaceX plant in Starbase, Texas — which residents just voted to make a city — can make a new Starship every two to three weeks, Musk said. The company will build two so-called "Giga Bay" facilities — one in Texas and another in Florida — to ramp that up to several per day. He envisions 1,000 to 2,000 ships heading to the Red Planet every couple of years, with the ability to catch and reuse boosters within hours. The goal is to send enough people, infrastructure, and supplies so that if for some reason cargo shipments from Earth stop coming, the Martian city won't die. "My guess is that's about a million tons, but it might be 10 million tons. I hope it's not 100 million tons," he said. "That'd be a lot."
