SpaceX plans to launch an Italian Earth-observation satellite on Saturday

SpaceX is currently expected to launch an Italian Earth-observation satellite no sooner than Saturday (Jan. 29), two days after the fact than arranged because of bad weather, and you’ll have the option to watch it live here when it takes off.

A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket finished off with the Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 (CSG-2) satellite is planned to take off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:11 p.m. EST (2311 GMT) on Saturday. SpaceX at first intended to launch the mission Thursday, yet delayed it for 24 hours less than an hour before takeoff. A launch attempt on Friday was forestalled by a thick cloud layer, the organization said.

“Standing down from today’s launch of COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 due to poor weather conditions at the launch site tonight; next opportunity is tomorrow, January 29 at 6:11 p.m. EST,” SpaceX wrote on Twitter after scrubbing the launch.

You can watch all the activities live at Space.com when the time comes, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the organization. SpaceX webcasts for the most part start 15 to 20 minutes before takeoff.

Saturday’s weather forecast calls for an 80% opportunity of good launch conditions, with twists at takeoff and upper-level wind shear as the only worries, as indicated by a forecast from the U.S. Space Force’s Delta 45 group.

The Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation program is supported by the Italian Space Agency, the Italian Ministry of Defense, and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities, and Scientific Research. The system comprises two satellites, which are intended to observe Earth using synthetic aperture radar (SAR).

CSG is an upgraded follow-on to the original Cosmo-SkyMed system.

“COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation[‘s] purpose is to monitor the Earth for the sake of emergency prevention, strategy, scientific and commercial purposes, providing data on a global scale to support a variety of applications among which risk management, cartography, forest, and environment protection, natural resources exploration, land management, defense and security, maritime surveillance, food and agriculture management,” European Space Agency officials wrote in a description of the program.

The first CSG satellite, CSG-1, launched on an Arianespace Soyuz rocket from Kourou, French Guiana in December 2019 and is as of now working in a sun-synchronous polar orbit, 385 miles (620 kilometers) above Earth. CSG-2 is set out toward a similar orbit.

This will be the third launch for this Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage. The booster previously helped launch the Arabsat-6A communications satellite and Space Test Program 2 mission for the U.S. military. For this flight, the rocket is relied upon to return for a vertical touchdown at SpaceX’s Landing Site 1 at Cape Canaveral not long after launch.

Saturday’s planned launch is part of a very busy 10-day stretch for SpaceX. Its robotic Dragon cargo spacecraft got back from the International Space Station on Monday (Jan. 24), and the organization is intending to launch a batch of its Starlink internet satellites on Sunday (Jan. 30) as well as the NROL-87 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office on Feb. 2.