SpaceX launches a rocket with three new satellites that will orbit the Earth

By Euronews en español con EFE • last update: 01/05/2023 – 08:35

The SpaceX company has launched this Sunday its Falcon 9 Heavy rocket to put satellites of the telecommunications companies ViaSat, Astranis and Gravity Space into orbit. The launch had been postponed three times.

The third time lucky. The aerospace company Space X has managed to launch the Falcon 9 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida after several cancellations. It carries several satellites from different companies on board, which will orbit the Earth. The most important and with the highest capacity is the satellite built by Boeing, ViaSat-3 Americas.

The size of a bus and weighing nearly five and a half tons, it is the largest capacity satellite currently in existence and will transmit Internet signals to consumers in rural areas and passengers on planes and ships in North and South America. .

The Californian company plans to launch two more satellites of the same class later to cover other areas of the planet. The second is now undergoing environmental testing at Boeing’s El Segundo, California factory and will be used for communications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The third ViaSat-3 satellite is now in the final phase of integration and payload testing at Viasat’s Tempe, Arizona facility and will focus on the Asia Pacific region, completing Viasat’s global service coverage.

Precisely Viasat announced this Sunday that the third ViaSat 3 satellite, designed to serve the Asia-Pacific region and called ViaSat 3 APAC, will no longer be launched on Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket,

The Ariane 6 rocket, which the European Space Agency and ArianeGroup are developing to replace the Ariane 5, is now scheduled for later this year, after years of delays, and the California company decided to look for another supplier, according to Spaceflight.com.

Another of the satellites launched this Sunday by the Falcon 9 Heavy is Arcturus from the Astranis firm, weighing just over 300 kilos and which will provide high-speed connectivity in the Alaska region and surroundings, and the third is GS-1, a cubesat to be operated by Washington-based Gravity Space.

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