Rocket Lab will launch a high-resolution Earth-imaging satellite this evening (Feb. 18), and you can watch the action live.
An Electron vehicle carrying the first "Gen-3" satellite for the geospatial intelligence company Blacksky is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site today at 6:15 p.m. EST (2315 GMT; 12:15 p.m. on Feb. 19 local New Zealand time).
Rocket Lab will stream the launch live beginning 30 minutes before liftoff. You can watch it here at Space.com or directly via the company.
Rocket Lab, which likes to give its launches playful names, calls today's mission "Fasten Your Space Belts."
"'Fasten Your Space Belts' will be Rocket Lab's ninth launch overall for BlackSky across multiple launch contracts beginning from 2019," Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description. "The mission will introduce their newest 35cm high-resolution Gen-3 satellites to orbit, allowing them to greatly enhance and optimize their geospatial intelligence capabilities."
If all goes according to plan today, Electron will deploy the Blacksky satellite into a circular orbit 292 miles (470 kilometers) above Earth 55.5 minutes after liftoff.
Related: Rocket Lab launches 5 IoT satellites on landmark 50th mission (video)
"Fasten Your Space Belts" will be Rocket Lab's second launch of 2025. The company launched a total of 16 missions last year — 14 with the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron and two with HASTE, a modified, suborbital version of the rocket that serves as a testbed for hypersonic technology.
"Fasten Your Space Belts" could be part of a spaceflight one-two punch today. SpaceX plans to launch yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites today, during a nearly 3.5-hour window that opens at 6:15 p.m. EST.
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