March
March 26: A United Launch Alliance
Atlas V rocket will launch the sixth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (
AEHF) satellite for the U.S. military. The
AEHF 6 mission will lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, during a 2-hour launch window that opens at 2:57 p.m. EDT (1857 GMT).
March 28: The waxing crescent moon will make a close approach to Venus in the evening sky. It will be in
conjunction with Venus at 6:37 a.m. EDT (1037 GMT), and the pair will still appear close the evenings before and after. Look for them above the southwestern horizon after sunset.
March 31: Conjunction of Saturn and Mars. The Ringed Planet and the Red Planet meet up for a special conjunction in the dawn sky. Saturn will pass less than 1 degree north of Mars at 6:56 a.m. EDT (1056 GMT).
April
April 6: SpaceX's
Dragon CRS-20 cargo craft will depart the International Space Station and return to Earth. NASA will provide live coverage of its departure beginning at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT), and it is scheduled to be released at 9:52 a.m. EDT (1352 GMT). The capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean a few hours later, but NASA will not broadcast the splashdown.
Watch it live.
April 9: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch the
Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft to the
International Space Station with three new Expedition 62/63 crewmembers: NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and two Russian cosmonauts, Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. (Originally, cosmonauts Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin were slated for this flight, but they were
replaced by their backup crew for "medical reasons" in February). The rocket will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, at
4:05 a.m. EDT (0805 GMT). The Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT).
Watch it live.
April 14: The last-quarter moon will make a close approach to Jupiter and Saturn in the dawn sky. It will be in
conjunction with Jupiter at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), followed by a
conjunction with Saturn on April 15 at 5:18 a.m. EDT (0918 GMT). Catch the trio in the morning sky, before sunrise.
April 16: Expedition 62 Cmdr. Oleg Skripochka of the Russian space agency Roscosmos will hand over command of the International Space Station to NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, marking the beginning of Expedition 63.
April 16-17: The Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft will return to Earth from the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka. The Soyuz is scheduled to depart the space station on April 16 at 9:53 p.m. EDT (0153 GMT on April 17), and it is scheduled to land near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at
1:17 a.m. EDT (0517 GMT) on April 17.
Watch it live.
April 16: Conjunction of the moon and Mars. The waning crescent moon will meet up with the Red Planet in the dawn sky. The pair will be in conjunction at 12:33 a.m. EDT (0433 GMT). Look for them above the southeast horizon before sunrise.
April 22: New moon
April 25: A Russian
Soyuz rocket will launch the 75th
Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station. It will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Watch it live.
April 26: The waxing crescent moon will make a close approach to Venus in the evening sky. It will be in
conjunction with Venus at 11:23 a.m. EDT (1523 GMT), and the pair will still appear close the evenings before and after. Look for them above the southwestern horizon after sunset.
April 29: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the U.S. Air Force's third third-generation navigation satellite, designated GPS 3 SV03, for the Global Positioning System. It will lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch a sixth batch of approximately 60 satellites for the company's Starlink broadband network in a mission designated Starlink 6. It will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
- A Chinese Long March 5B rocket will launch on a test flight with an unpiloted prototype for China's new human-rated crew capsule, which is designed for future human missions to the moon. This will be the first flight of a Long March 5B rocket. It will lift off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan, China.
- India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) will launch on its first orbital test flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India.
