Here's How to Watch an Atlas V Rocket Launch a US Military Satellite Today

By Hanneke Weitering
published

Liftoff is at 5:44 a.m. EDT (0944 GMT).

Update for Thursday, 6:45 am ET: The United Launch Alliance has successfully launched an Atlas V rocket carrying the AEHF-5 military satellite for the U.S. Air Force. Read our full story here.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch a military communications satellite together with an experimental cubesat early Thursday morning (Aug. 8), and you can watch the mission live online. 

The rocket is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during a two-hour launch window that opens at 5:44 a.m. EDT (0944 GMT). A webcast of the launch will begin at 5:24 a.m. EDT (0924 GMT), and you can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of the United Launch Alliance. 

This mission's primary payload is the U.S. Air Force's fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF-5) satellite. Built by Lockheed Martin, AEHF constellation will ultimately consist of six satellites that will provide global and secure communications for strategic command and tactical warfighters on the ground, in the air and at sea, Lockheed Martin officials said in a description of the mission. 

Related: In Photos: Atlas V Launches NASA's InSight to Mars

The Atlas V rocket that will launch the AEHF-5 satellite rolls out to the launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (Image credit: ULA)

Each of the six AEHF satellites will provide coverage from a geostationary orbit, meaning that they constantly "hover" over the same position above the Earth by following along with the planet's rotation. They will replace the military's aging Milstar constellation.

A secondary payload — a small cubesat — will hitch a ride to orbit with AEHF-5. The cubesat, which is also owned by the U.S. military, will separate from the rocket's upper stage before AEHF-5 and will test new orbital debris-tracking technologies, according to Space News. 

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.