SpaceX has a busy weekend ahead of it

The booster to be used as early as Monday for CRS-14 flew last August during the CRS-12 mission. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX has launched five rockets so far during the first quarter of 2018, but now the company will amp up that pace by tryng to go for two launches in four days. If successful with these flights, the cadence would put the company two months ahead of 2017's record pace, when SpaceX launched a total of 18 rockets. Last year, SpaceX didn't launch its seventh rocket until June 3.

The company's first attempt comes Friday, when SpaceX is scheduled to lift a batch of satellites for the Iridium NEXT mobile communications fleet. This is the fifth set of 10 satellites in a series of 75 total satellites SpaceX will launch for Iridium. This flight will occur from the company's launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. Then, on Monday, SpaceX plans to launch its 14th cargo supply mission to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

After engineers with Iridium solved an issue with the payload of communications satellites, SpaceX set a launch date of March 30, with an instantaneous launch window of 10:13am ET. The 10 communications satellites and their dispenser, combined, weigh just under 10 metric tons and are bound for low-Earth orbit. A backup launch window is available on Saturday.

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