Watch Rocket Lab launch Japanese 'origami' satellite, 7 other spacecraft to orbit tonight

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Rocket Lab will send eight Japanese satellites to orbit from New Zealand tonight (April 22), including one with a unique "origami" construction, and you can watch the action live.

An Electron vehicle is scheduled launch the "Kakuchin Rising" mission from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site tonight at 11:09 p.m. EDT (0309 GMT and 3:19 p.m. local New Zealand time on Thursday, April 23).

Rocket Lab will stream the launch live, starting about 30 minutes before liftoff. Space.com will carry the company's feed if, as expected, it's made available.

"Kakuchin Rising" is the second of two contracted Electron missions for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program.

The first such flight, which Rocket Lab called "RAISE and Shine," occurred last December. It sent JAXA's Rapid Innovative payload demonstration Satellite-4, known as RAISE-4, to low Earth orbit to test a variety of technologies.

The eight satellites flying on "Kakuchin Rising" are a diverse bunch. They include "educational smallsats, an ocean monitoring satellite, a demonstration satellite for ultra-small multispectral cameras, and a deployable antenna that can be packed tightly using origami folding techniques and unfurled to 25 times its size," Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description.

"Kakuchin Rising" will be the 79th launch to date for the 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to Earth orbit and beyond.

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Rocket Lab also flies missions to and from suborbital space using a modified version of Electron called HASTE. Customers book HASTE missions primarily to test hypersonic technologies.

Mike WallSpaceflight and Tech Editor

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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