SpaceX makes successful mission
Print Edition
AN unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket yesterday blasted off from Florida to put a communications satellite into orbit, then made a swift return landing on an ocean platform, a live webcast showed.
It was the second successful landing at sea for entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which intends to offer cut-rate launch services by re-using its rockets.
“Woohoo!!” Musk wrote on social media website Twitter after the landing.
“May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar.”
SpaceX successfully landed a rocket on a floating landing pad in April after four failed attempts. Another Falcon rocket had touched down on a ground-based landing pad at Cape Canaveral in December.
Before yesterday’s launch SpaceX had downplayed expectations for the rocket’s successful return.
The rocket flying yesterday was traveling twice as fast as the one that landed last month so it could deliver a hefty television broadcast satellite into an orbit more than 32,200 kilometers beyond that of the International Space Station, which is about 400km above Earth.
The 23-story-high rocket lifted off from a seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:21am. Perched atop the booster was the JCSAT-14 satellite, owned by the Tokyo-based telecommunications company, SKY Perfect JSAT Corp, a new customer for SpaceX.
About 150 seconds after launch the rocket’s first stage shut down, separated, flipped around and headed toward a so-called drone ship stationed more than 650km off Florida’s coast in the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket’s second stage continued flying to deliver the 4.7-ton JCSAT-14 satellite into orbit.
The satellite, built by Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California, a subsidiary of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates is designed to provide television, data and mobile communications services to customers across Asia, Russia and Oceania and the Pacific Islands.
Yesterday’s launch was the fourth of more than a dozen flights planned this year by SpaceX, which has a backlog of more than US$10 billion worth of launch orders from customers including NASA.
Last week, SpaceX won its first contract to launch a US military satellite, breaking a 10-year-old monopoly held by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
