JCSAT-14 was the ninth geostationary communications satellite launched by SpaceX, with Friday’s mission the eighth time Falcon 9 has targeted a geosynchronous transfer orbit.
Advertisement
On Thursday night, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket that dropped a satellite off in space before returning to Earth and sticking its landing aboard a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX achieved the landing feat for the first time in April after a few spectacular failures – before that, it had only returned successfully to solid ground. New boosters then have to be constructed for subsequent flights, at great cost.
In traditional Musk fashion during SpaceX launches, he took to Twitter to communicate mission status and ended with a part tongue-in-cheek statement after the Falcon 9 successfully landed, yet again.
Musk had given even odds for a successful landing, after SpaceX had said it was unlikely.
Post-launch recovery is an important step for SpaceX, since it hopes to land and reuse as many Falcon 9 rockets as possible. Aboard is the JCSAT-14 communications satellite…
Tech Insider wrote: “The May 6 rocket-landing attempt was much more hard than the previous one, too”.
The California-based company pulled off such a landing last month for the first time, after launching an unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station. “May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar”.
According to Musk, the reusable rockets could significantly cut the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100. SpaceX is an anchor in Florida’s, NASA’s and the Air Force’s efforts to repurpose the Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center spaceport into a multi-user government, military and commercial space launch center.
Advertisement
SKY Perfect, Asia’s largest satellite operator at 3.5 million subscribers, hired SpaceX for the launch in January of 2014 to replace a satellite nearing the end of its 15-year life span.
