Less than a month after the failure of its third launch attempt, the California-based firm Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is poised once more to loft a Falcon 1 rocket.
Launch of SpaceX’s fourth Falcon 1 rocket is set for sometime between 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) tonight and 12:00 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT) on Monday, according to an update from the firm’s CEO Elon Musk.
“Of course, if we see anything that requires investigation, the launch will be postponed, but we’ll let you know as soon as we know,” Musk wrote in an update posted to the SpaceX Web site on Saturday.
Tonight’s planned liftoff will be staged from SpaceX’s launch site at the U.S. Army’s Ronald Reagan Ballistic Defense Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) southwest of Hawaii in the central Pacific Ocean.
The launch will be broadcast live on the SpaceX Web site (http://www.spacex.com) when the attempt begins.
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket is a two-stage rocket with a reusable first stage that stands 68 feet tall (21 meters) and can haul payloads of up to about 1,256 pounds (570 kg) to low-Earth orbit. The $6.7 million rocket weighs 60,000 pounds (27,200 kg), but has failed three consecutive times since its 2006 debut.
On Aug. 2, SpaceX launched its third Falcon 1 test flight only to watch it fail when the booster’s first stage separated, then impacted the second stage as both flew 135 miles (217 km) above Earth. An engine shutdown timing error was cited as the cause and could be fixed relatively easily, Musk said at the time.
“The fix was also very simple, requiring one line of code to be changed,” SpaceX officials said in a weekend update.
While all three of SpaceX’s first Falcon 1 launches have carried small satellite payloads, the fourth rocket is carrying “a a payload mass simulator of approximately 165 kg (364 lbs), designed and built by SpaceX specifically for this mission,” SpaceX officials said.












