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Update: Spaceflight Now reports successful Hispasat 30W-6 separation from the Falcon 9 rocket.
Falcon 9 satellite launches are big business for SpaceX.
SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida late Monday, Pacific time, for the 50th time since the first Falcon 9 mission less than eight years ago.
It's perhaps fitting the milestone mission will be a rather routine delivery of Hispasat 30W-6, a Spanish communications satellite, to a geostationary orbit high above the equator. Such commercial satellite missions, along with the occasional flight to resupply the International Space Station, have been the bread and butter of SpaceX's business for the past several years.
Along the way, the Falcon 9 has also pioneered the era of the reusable rocket. The company has successfully landed and recovered a Falcon 9 a total of 23 times (a pair of those landings included boosters that made up the Falcon Heavy launch last month). Six of the 23 landings involved rockets making their second flights.
The launch will be live-streamed on YouTube. Here is SpaceX's description of the mission:
Scheduled for Mar 5, 2018
SpaceX is targeting a Falcon 9 launch of the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) on Tuesday, March 6 from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The two-hour launch window opens at 12:33 a.m. EST, or 5:33 UTC. The Hispasat 30W-6 satellite will be deployed approximately 33 minutes after launch.
A two-hour backup launch window opens on Wednesday, March 7 at 12:33 a.m. EST, or 5:33 UTC. SpaceX will not attempt to land Falcon 9's first stage after launch due to unfavorable weather conditions in the recovery area off of Florida's Atlantic Coast.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:06PM
Tesla is a slow motion disaster due to the need (because of debt and overinflated stock price) to appeal to fickle mass market consumers with an expensive niche product. Whereas SpaceX can provide some of the cheapest launches in the industry and unbeatable $/kg to orbit, and caters mostly to governments and commercial customers.
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