Brenda Marie Rivers
Spaceflight will fly a microsatellite for the Air Force Research Laboratory via a rideshare service with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket as part of a mission to send a commercial communciations satellite built by Maxar Technologies’ SSL business into orbit, SpaceNews reported Friday.
Falcon 9 will carry the Indonesian satellite Nusantara Satu, onto which AFRL’s experimental S5 smallsat will be latched to facilitate situational awareness technology assessments in space.
According to Spaceflight, S5 will separate from the primary satellite payload before the latter reaches its last geosynchronous equatorial orbit.
The report said a lunar lander called Beresheet and built by SpaceIL, an Israel-based team that took part in Google‘s Lunar X Prize competition, will also join the mission as a secondary payload. Beresheet is designed to gradually extend its orbit toward the moon over a two-month period.
The launch is scheduled to take place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida no earlier than Thursday.
