SpaceX is now ready to fly its first spacecraft since the incident in Florida from last year. A Falcon 9 rocket was launched on January 21 from California. The spaceship managed to place into orbit a constellation of satellites. This was marked as being the first launch of the company since the Explosion which affected Falcon 9 four months ago.
- After the terrible incident in Florida from four months ago, SpaceX faces success.
- Falcon 9 was launched on January 21 bound to deploy a constellation of satellites.
- The first stage of the spacecraft landed on a platform in the Pacific Ocean.
On Saturday, January 21, the two-stage spaceship set off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:54 a.m. delivering a payload for Iridium Communications Inc. This company is bound to replace their whole global network with 70 new satellites. The constellation of satellites was deployed an hour after the spacecraft was launched.
Approximately nine minutes after the launch of the spaceship, the first stage of the rocket landed on a drone ship located in the Pacific Ocean, south of Vandenberg. This represented a part of SpaceX’s struggle to transform boosters into reusable material. Before this occurrence, the company had already succeeded six times to land a rover ashore or on a barge.
A camera installed aboard the first stage of the ship offered an amazing experience, capturing every detail and making the users feel as if they were living it, while it returned home. It made a perfect landing on the floating pad, making everyone SpaceX proud. This successful event is a major step forward for the SpaceX.
Elon Musk, the owner of the California-based company, has approximately 70 more launches to come. This launch’s costs were estimated at $10 billion. Besides the commercial launches, SpaceX ferries provide to the International Space Station while developing a capsule meant to carry astronauts to the ISS.
SpaceX officials claimed that they had identified all causes which may have fueled the accident on September 1st, 2016 to happen. What is more, they had also taken appropriate action to prohibit this type of explosions from happening again. The terrible explosion caused the destruction of the spacecraft and its payload.
The payload represented a satellite which Facebook wanted to use to provide internet access in Africa. Unfortunately, the terrible incident prohibited Falcon 9 to be launched again until the investigation was complete. SpaceX has announced that investigators’ conclusion is that the accident involved a glitch of one of the three helium tanks located inside the spaceship’s second-stage tank.
Image courtesy of: flickr
Mark Lewis says
This flight happened January 14th, not the 21st. https://www.spacex.com/missions
Daniel Jo says
Yeah, I was thinking: “could sworn I’d watched that launch!”