STP-2
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SpaceX's 'challenging' Falcon Heavy mission launch goes 2/3 on booster landings
Last year SpaceX launched its massive Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, but the company describes tonight's STP-2 mission as one of the "most challenging" launches in its history. It's also the first Falcon Heavy launch to reuse side boosters, which previously took flight just 74 days ago on the Arabsat-6A mission. The tricky part is after it takes off, with a planned "four separate upper-stage engine burns, three separate deployment orbits, a final propulsive passivation maneuver and a total mission duration of over six hours." SpaceX's mission animation video shows what we're expecting to see:
NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock leaves Earth on June 24th
NASA JPL's Deep Space Atomic Clock, the navigation clock that could lead to self-driving spacecraft, is finally heading to space. The toaster-sized device will fly on the Orbital Test Bed satellite, which will be ferried to orbit along with two dozen other military, government and research satellites aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on June 24th, 2019. It took two decades for JPL scientists to develop the technology, making sure it's 50 times more accurate than GPS clocks and that it'll be only off by 1 second every 10 million years.
