Rocket Lab is launching its second orbital payload

Rocket Lab is launching its second orbital payload of the year late tonight, at the launch site in New Zealand. Three experimental satellites will be carried by it to low Earth orbit and can be watched live.

The launch is Rocket Lab’s fifth orbital mission. The payloads going up tonight/tomorrow are:

SPARC-1: Intended to “support live experimentation with different waveforms and protocols useful to communications missions.” With a camera in it.

Falcon ODE: Orbital Debris Experiment to help adjust ground-based debris-detection systems.

Harbinger: It has a synthetic aperture radar to observe Earth regardless of illumination or cloud cover.