SpaceX Mission 23 with the Falcon 9 spacecraft, which includes the Puerto Rico Cubesat NanoRocks2 (PR-CuNaR2) satellite, designed and built by Puerto Rican hands, was postponed until tomorrow Sunday morning due to the conditions of the weather in Cap Canyar area in Florida.
The PR-CuNaR2 was designed and developed by students and Professor Amílcar Racó Charris of the Bayamón School of Engineering at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico. The launch has been rescheduled for 3:14 a.m. tomorrow Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center.
The teacher and students were getting ready this morning for the historic event, when from SpaceX’s Twitter account the postponement of the launch was announced due to weather conditions in the area. Interviewed by Wapa TV, the Puerto Ricans showed resignation to the postponement, although they are hopeful that tomorrow will be able to get the launch that will take into space its satellite that for the next two years will orbit the earth and study the origin and development of planets, stars and asteroids.
“It couldn’t be done today, but we have hope for tomorrow, 20 minutes before today. I felt it as a practice, tomorrow we will be here again, we will be there until it is launched,” Professor Racó Charris explained.
Once the launch is complete, the satellite will make a journey of about nine hours from Earth to the International Space Station. There he will be picked up by an astronaut who will keep him at the Station until about September or October. An extendable arm will then be used to eject the satellite into space at an altitude of 400 kilometers.
Already in space, the satellite will orbit the earth every hour and a half. That is, it will give you about 16 turns in the earth in a day. It will remain there for a period of approximately two years, until it disintegrates in the atmosphere.
The satellite weighs 5.6 pounds and measures four inches wide by four inches long and 12 inches high. “It’s a small satellite that has all the same components as a large satellite we know from telecommunications, and with that we will be doing a scientific mission in evaluating how particles behave in microgravity,” he explained. a Subway the teacher Charris corner.
About 65 students were part of the development of the PR-CuNaR2 that began in 2018, although the design and construction prototype began in 2013.