The private aerospace company SpaceX canceled this Sunday about to take off the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation radar surveillance satellite of the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
“Withdrawal of today’s COSMO-SkyMed FM2 2nd generation launch due to a ship in the danger area; the team is preparing for the next opportunity tomorrow, January 31 at 6:11 p.m. EST,” SpaceX reported via Twitter.
During a live broadcast on the company’s YouTube channel, the cancellation of the flight was reported at the last minute, when the rocket already had its engines running and smoke was coming from its exhaust.
After several takeoff attempts in recent days, these suspended due to weather problems, the powerful Falcon 9 rocket today aborted the mission as a result of a ship that unexpectedly passed near the Florida coast near the NASA space station, According to the narrator of the event.
This is the launch of the second generation of an Italian surveillance satellite that is to be directed to low Earth orbit to monitor the Earth for scientific and military purposes.
The Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation program is funded by the Italian Space Agency, the Italian Ministry of Defense, and the Italian Ministry of Education, as well as scientific research universities.
The system consists of two satellites designed to observe the Earth using synthetic aperture radar (SAR), according to the specialized media space.com.
On the other hand, SpaceX, a firm founded by tycoon Elon Musk, announced on Twitter the launch this Monday of its Falcon 9 with another batch of satellites from its “Starlink” program, which aims to put a large number of artificial satellites into orbit. for the creation of a broadband internet network.