They’re starting to make this look (relatively) easy.
Keeping plenty of space-mad Americans up late on a Saturday night, SpaceX successfully undertook its eighth Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida around 1:30 a.m. ET.
Minutes later, Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company also managed to re-land the rocket’s booster intact on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
The launch’s payload was a Japanese commercial communications satellite called JCSAT-16 for the SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. The satellite was delivered to what’s known as Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) at a height of around 36,000 kilometres. Read more…
More about Spacex, Reusable Rockets, Falcon9, Private Space Flight, and Science