Tuesday afternoon, SpaceX aims to launch a telecommunications satellite for Telkomsat, which touts itself as Indonesia’s leading satellite service provider, into low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Though SpaceX has yet to publicly announce this mission, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory shows the 2½-hour Telkomsat HTS 113BT launch window will open at 3:11 p.m. EST and last until 5:44 p.m.
The Falcon 9 rocket will take flight in an easterly trajectory from Launch Complex 40, a Coast Guard navigational advisory shows.
In October 2021, Thales Alenia Space announced it had signed a contract with Telkomsat to build the HTS 113BT satellite.
“HTS 113BT will provide more than 32 (gigabit per second) capacity over Indonesia. The satellite will weigh about 4 metric tons at launch and will be delivered early 2024 for a 15-year expected lifetime,” an October 2021 Thales Alenia Space press release said.
Fast-forward to Jan. 11. Thales Alenia Space officials tweeted a video showing crews loading the satellite from a clean room in Cannes, France, into a protective shipping container. The container was trucked to the Port of Nice via convoy and loaded onto a cargo ship bound for Florida.
Indonesian #telecommunications satellite Telkomsat HTS 113BT left the port of Nice on January 9 and is heading to Florida’s Port Canaveral by sea. Check-out these stunning images of the #satellite being loaded inside its container in our clean rooms of Cannes end of last year. pic.twitter.com/jTy9Ksjazz
— Thales Alenia Space (@Thales_Alenia_S) January 11, 2024
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Then on Jan. 31, Port Canaveral officials tweeted a video showing crews unloading the satellite from the vessel onto a tractor trailer for transport to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The National Weather Service forecast for Tuesday calls for sunny skies, a high near 66, and north-northwest wind of 10 to 15 mph — punctuated by gusts as high as 20 mph — at the Space Force base.
🛰️ SATELLITE ARRIVES AT PORT CANAVERAL 🚀 Special arrival for a satellite built by Thales Alenia Space. The satellite was carefully offloaded from the Ro-Ro cargo vessel MN Colibri and trucked to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, scheduled to launch in the coming weeks. The… pic.twitter.com/MhGK304CTA
— Port Canaveral (@PortCanaveral) January 31, 2024
FLORIDA TODAY’s Space Team will start posting Telkomsat HTS 113BT mission updates starting about 90 minutes before the launch window opens at floridatoday.com/space.
Tuesday’s mission is slated to become the 11th orbital launch from Florida’s Space Coast thus far this year.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more of his stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX Telkomsat HTS 113BT launch set for Tuesday from Cape Canaveral
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