Live coverage: SpaceX to launch Indonesian communications satellite from Cape Canaveral

An Indonesian company is looking to improve its space-based communications service with a state-of-the-art Boeing-built satellite bound for geostationary orbit.

The spacecraft comes from Satelit Nusantara Lima (SNL), a subsidiary of Indonesia’s first private satellite company, Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN). The satellite itself is called Nusantara Lima or N5 for short.

The name is derived from the Old Javanese language words nūsa, “island”, and antara “outer.” Lima, meanwhile, means “five” in Indonesian.

SpaceX is targeting the liftoff of the N5 satellite from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:02 p.m. EDT (0002 UTC). This is the opening of a 116-minute window.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.

On Sunday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 30 percent chance for favorable weather at the opening of the launch window, which improves to 45 percent as the window progresses. Meteorologists said to expect a “high likelihood of showers and storms,” which includes “the overnight and morning hours.”

“Deep atmospheric moisture will remain entrenched across Florida into early next week,” launch weather officers wrote. “At the surface, a weak boundary will oscillate across Central Florida before being replaced by a stronger incoming front by the middle of next week. Troughing over the Great Lakes States extending southward into the Gulf is also contributing to a rather messy weather pattern.”

SpaceX will launch the N5 satellite using its Falcon 9 rocket with a veteran first stage booster: B1078. This will be the booster’s 23rd flight, following a variety of missions, including NASA’s Crew-6, USSF-124 and ASTSpaceMobile’s BlueBird 1-5 satellites.

After boosting the rocket out of the lower atmosphere, B1078 will head for a landing on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ in the Atlantic Ocean. A successful landing would represent the 124th recovery for that vessel and 502nd booster landing to date for SpaceX.

Improving connectivity

The N5 satellite was built on Boeing Space Systems’ 702MP VHTS (Very High Throughput Satellite) bus and is designed to offer a capacity of 160 Gbps with its 101 Ka-band spot beam. It’s built to have a greater than 15-year operating life.

The spacecraft is expected to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage more than 27 minutes after liftoff. A Boeing spokesperson said signal acquisition is expected about 15-30 minutes after separation.

N5 should reach its operating orbit at 113 degrees East over the Equator sometime around mid-January with service expected to begin in early 2026.

“Boeing’s satellite business has a rich history of serving Indonesia and the Asia Pacific region, dating back to the Palapa A1 satellite in 1976,” said Ryan Reid, president of Boeing Satellite Systems International in a statement. “With Nusantara Lima, we’re proud to continue that legacy, delivering a reliable, high-throughput solution tailored to Indonesia’s unique geography and connectivity needs. PSN has been an outstanding partner throughout this program.”

The N5 satellite was announced in 2022 as a relay station designed to augment the capability of the Satria-1, which launched in June 2023. N5 was also originally supposed to launch in 2023, but it was delayed.

Spaceflight Now reached out to PSN regarding the delay, but didn’t hear back before publication.

The satellite is built on the same Boeing-built bus used on Intelsat’s IS-33e spacecraft, which suffered an anomaly on Oct. 19, 2024, resulting in the “total loss” of the spacecraft, which fragmented into dozens of pieces. The satellite was launched in August 2016 and entered service in January 2017.

The root cause of the anomaly was not announced publicly.