Watch Rocket Lab launch private Japanese ‘Strix’ satellite to orbit today

Rocket Lab will launch an Earth-observing radar satellite for the Japanese company Synspective today (March 19), and you can watch it live.

An Electron rocket topped with one of Synspective’s Strix satellites is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab‘s New Zealand site today at 1:45 p.m. EDT (1745 GMT; 6:45 a.m. on March 20 local New Zealand time), on a mission called “Eight Days a Week.”

Rocket Lab will stream the launch live, starting about 20 minutes before liftoff. Space.com will carry the company’s feed, if (as expected) it’s made available.

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Today’s launch will be the eighth that Rocket Lab conducts for Synspective, which helps explain the mission name.

The Tokyo-based company is building “a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging constellation over Japan that provides data for urban development planning, construction and infrastructure monitoring and disaster response,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description.

Rocket Lab has been the sole launch provider to date for the Strix constellation, whose first satellite went up in 2020. (“Strix,” in case you were wondering, is a widespread genus of owls.) Synspective has booked another 20 Electron launches, including “Eight Days a Week,” to finishing assembling the constellation by 2029, according to Rocket Lab.

“Eight Days a Week” will be the 77th launch to date for the 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) Electron, which debuted with a test flight in May 2017.

Rocket Lab has also launched seven missions with HASTE, a suborbital version of Electron that allows customers to test hypersonic technologies in the space environment.