Watch SpaceX launch big communications satellite on Sunday - Space.com

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Amazonas Nexus satellite for the Spanish company Hispasat is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday at 7:32 p.m. EST (0032 GMT on Feb. 6).

The Falcon 9's upper stage will continue carrying Amazonas Nexus skyward, eventually deploying the 10,000-pound (4,500 kilograms) satellite into geostationary transfer orbit just under 36 minutes after liftoff.

Hispasat will perform a few weeks of checkouts with the spacecraft, then slip it into its final orbit and put the satellite to work providing internet service to broad swathes of the globe.

Amazonas Nexus "will cover the entire American continent, Greenland and the North and South Atlantic corridors and will be focused on connectivity services in remote areas and in air and maritime mobility environments," Hispasat wrote in a prelaunch statement(opens in new tab).

"Hispasat has reached multiple business agreements to lease the long-term capacity [of] Amazonas Nexus with operators and service providers in the governmental and connectivity fields for the aviation sector and in remote areas," the company added.

Mike Wall is the author of " Out There(opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.