SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered the SES-10 communications satellite Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage of the rocket then successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The historic mission marked the first re-use of a rocket. Falcon 9’s first stage for the SES-10 mission previously supported the successful CRS-8 mission in April 2016.



SES-10, which was built by Airbus Defence and Space and is based on the Eurostar E3000 platform, features a Ku-band payload of 55 36MHz transponder equivalents, of which 27 are incremental. The satellite is wholly dedicated to providing service to Latin America, replacing capacity currently provided by other SES satellites at 67 degrees West, as well as bring additional capacity to Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The satellite will operate as the Andean Community’s Simón Bolivar 2 providing satellite capacity for each Andean Member State. </s> As well as successfully launching the payload, SpaceX was also able to recover the Falcon 9’s first stage for a second time.

Today’s successful landing of the refurbished Falcon 9 marks the second time the rocket has seen use.

Previously, SpaceX had launched and landed its rockets some 13 times. On Monday, SpaceX said it test-fired the entire rocket, including the recycled booster, on the launch pad.

There have been no reports if the Luxembourg-based SES Corp. got a big discount on this launch, testing the reused rocket.

Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer at SES has refused to discuss the cost of the Falcon 9 flight, however he stressed that the launch will be historic. SpaceX is hoping the boosters can be re-used as many as 10 or 15 times.

Currently, millions of dollars worth of rocket parts are jettisoned after each launch. This is a huge accomplishment because it already did this once before – with the same rocket, on the same barge, when it landed a year ago following a successful launch during a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

According to information released by SpaceX, the SES-10 satellite was placed in a geostationary transfer orbit with no apparent problems.

The SES mission will hoist a commercial satellite to serve communications in Latin America.

Its tall, columnar portion known as the first stage, or booster, had already propelled the unmanned Dragon cargo ship to space in April 2016. If it can be used a few times, SpaceX can drastically bring down the price of a single launch. “It’s really a great day not just for SpaceX but the space industry as a whole, and proving that something can be done that many said was impossible”. “This is going to be ultimately a huge revolution in spaceflight”, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said after the successful mission, calling it an “amazing day” for the space industry. SES officials preferred the words “flight-proven” to used. During the space shuttle program, the twin booster rockets dropped away two minutes into flight and parachuted into the Atlantic for recovery.

“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred”, said Musk on the SpaceX website. Four previous SpaceX at-sea landing attempts failed.

The company is getting pretty good at returning rockets to Earth: After 13 attempts in recent years, the company has stuck eight of them. </s> SpaceX is poised to make history on Thursday with the first relaunch of a used Falcon 9 rocket into space from Launch Complex 39A at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The space-transportation company is scheduled to launch SES-10, a commercial communications satellite for the Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES, into orbit at 6:27 PM EST (11:27 PM BST).

The rocket's lower section - first stage - has already been the space and back in the CRS-8 mission when it was sent cargo to the International Space Station for Nasa in April 2016. The booster was then successfully landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic.

This launch will mark the first time SpaceX has attempted to reuse one of its rockets in a major milestone for the company attempting to reuse rockets and considerably lower launch costs. Until now, rocket stages are typically discarded. The first stage and clamshell of the Falcon 9 rocket are new.

SpaceX will again attempt to land the first stage on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship in the Atlantic Ocean after takeoff, which means the vehicle could see more flight time going forward as well. The company has successfully landed and recovered eight rockets to date.

"We're at the edge of quite a significant bit of history here," Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer at SES said in a statement. "We've been through this thing with a fine-toothed comb. SpaceX have been through this with a fine-toothed comb. This booster is a really good booster, and we're confident."

SES is also getting a discount for launching the SES 10 satellite on a rocket with a previously flown first stage. New Falcon 9 rockets are usually advertised at around $62m (£49.8m) each.

Halliwell said the reusability factor is not just "an issue about money."

"Will re-usability lead to cheaper prices? I hope so, but for us it's also about having a route to space," Halliwell told BBC News. "We've been waiting for six months now to fly SES-10, and that's because there was no other alternative opportunity.

"If we can start getting the rocket companies looking toward re-usability and going down this path, we should have much more flexibility in being able to launch our various different missions."

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also long touted the concept of "full and rapid reusability" to revolutionise and reduce the cost of space access. With a backlog of 70 missions worth over $10m, the company plans to launch its Falcon 9 rockets every two to three weeks this year from the new launch pad at the Kennedy Space Centre.

"I think this is a really good milestone for the future of space flight," Musk said after the rocket booster's successful landing last year. "I think it's another step towards the stars. In order for us to really open up access to space, we've got to achieve full and rapid reusability. And being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to have a huge impact on cost."

The two and a half hour launch window is scheduled to open at 6:27PM EST on 30 March with the satellite deploying about 32 minutes after liftoff. It will be livestreamed on SpaceX's hosted webcast on YouTube. </s> SpaceX has successfully launched a Falcon 9 to orbit during its BulgariaSat-1 mission Friday. The launch reused a first stage booster first employed during an Iridium Communications mission in January of this year, after that Falcon 9 first stage was recovered and refurbished.

The mission on Friday was to delivery Bulgaria’s first ever geostationary communications satellite into orbit, so that it could begin operations broadcast communication networks and HDTV signals for clients on Earth in parts of Europe. The satellite was built by SSL out of Palo Alto, California.

The first stage also landed successfully on the company’s drone ship in the Atlantic ocean, “Of course I still love you,” making it the first ever to have successfully landed on both of SpaceX’s two ocean-borne drone landing vessels. That recovery was also the most challenging successful landing so far for SpaceX, because of launch conditions.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk warned on Twitter prior to the launch that the Falcon 9 used would “experience its highest ever reentry force” during today’s launch, along with record levels of heat, making it less likely that SpaceX will be able to successfully recover the rocket for reuse this time around. In fact, Musk said there’s a “good chance” they don’t get the rocket back.

The launch from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center is the second ever re-use of an orbital rocket, after SpaceX successfully completed its first reflight of recycled Falcon 9 first stage back in March.

The primary mission was also a success, with SpaceX deploying the BulgariaSat-1 satellite into geostationary transfer orbit as of around 3:45 PM EDT. Next up, SpaceX will attempt its Iridium-2 mission launch on Sunday, June 25. </s> New Delhi: In a mission that marked the company's second launch of a reused rocket's first stage, SpaceX successfully flagged off its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Bulgarian communications satellite.

The BulgariaSat-1, sitting tight aboard the Falcon 9, lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday, SpaceNews reported. The spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9's second stage 35 minutes after lift-off.

The first stage landed on a SpaceX drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean after what SpaceX cautioned would be a "super challenging" landing attempt due to the high reentry loads for this particular flight profile.

Due to an error, the video from the drone ship cut out shortly before the landing, but was restored several seconds later, showing the stage upright, but leaning slightly, having landed slightly off-center.

"Rocket is extra toasty and hit the deck hard (used almost all of the emergency crush core), but otherwise good," SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted shortly after the landing.

He had tweeted prior to the launch that, because of the high reentry loads, there was a "good chance (the rocket booster doesn't make it back".

This launch marked the second time that SpaceX has reflown a Falcon 9 first stage, after the March launch of the SES-10 satellite.

The first stage for this launch first flew in January on a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying 10 Iridium Next satellites into orbit before landing on a ship offshore.

BulgariaSat selected SSL to build BulgariaSat-1 in September 2014, a deal that also included the SpaceX launch.

The satellite, with an estimated mass of 4,000 kg, carries a total of 32 Ku-band transponders to provide fixed and broadcast satellite services and has a planned 15-year lifetime. </s> Three days after successfully launching 10 communications satellites into orbit from the West Coast, Hawthorne-based SpaceX on Monday launched a cargo mission from the East Coast en route to the International Space Station.

The CRS-14 mission launched from Cape Canaveral at about 1:30 p.m. Pacific time.

SpaceX used a Dragon cargo-carrying spaceship for the mission — the same one it used during an April 2016 cargo flight to the space station. The Falcon 9 rocket that propelled the ship into space also was previously used, launching a space-station supply mission in August 2017.

Although SpaceX has made a habit of recovering its Falcon 9 rockets for reuse in future missions — reducing the cost of space flights by millions of dollars — the company did not attempt to recover the rocket from Monday’s launch.

The launch was the company’s seventh rocket flight this year and its 14th resupply launch to the space station since 2012 under a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA.

Included in the Dragon spaceship’s nearly three tons of cargo are several science experiments, including:
• An Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, which will study severe thunderstorms and their impact on Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
• An experiment testing the effect of a no-gravity environment on the process of producing high-performance products from metal powders.

The spaceship is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station on Wednesday. It will remain at the space station for about a month, before it returns to Earth with about 3,900 pounds of cargo, according to SpaceX.

SpaceX on Friday launched 10 Iridium communications satellites into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The satellites are part of what will ultimately be a 75-satellite array for Iridium’s “next-generation” communications system, which is expected to be in place this summer. </s> LOSANGELES-SpaceX has successfully launched and landed a recycled Falcon 9 rocket for the second time. The rocket’s first stage the 14-story-tall core that houses the fuel and the rocket’s main engines touched down on one of the company’s autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from a launch pad at nearby Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s the 12th time SpaceX has successfully landed one of these rocket stages out of 17 attempts, and the seventh time it’s performed the feat at sea.

This particular rocket previously flew in January, when it was used to put 10 satellites into orbit for communications company Iridium. The rocket then landed on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. SpaceX retrieved the rocket and spent the next few months refurbishing it in preparation for today’s launch. This afternoon, it was used to launch Bulgaria’s first communications satellite for TV service provider Bulsatcom. The landing wasn’t easy, though. Because the rocket had to push BulgariaSat-1 to such a high orbit, the first stage experienced more force and heat during reentry than any other Falcon 9, according to a tweet from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Musk even warned that there was a “good chance the rocket booster doesn’t make it back.” Shortly after the landing, though, Musk returned to Twitter to add that the rocket booster used “almost all of the emergency crush core,” which helps soften the landing. It was the first time SpaceX has landed one rocket on both of its drone ships.

Being able to reuse parts of the Falcon 9 rocket has long been a goal for Musk. He’s been trying to get the company to a point where it can reuse things like the rocket’s main stage, or the payload fairing (the cone at the top), instead of building a new rocket for each new launch.

Reusing rockets is a great way to bring down launch costs; previously, they were discarded after each launch, and building them from scratch costs millions of dollars.

To that end, SpaceX launched and landed a reused Falcon 9 for the first time back in March, and it also recovered that rocket’s fairing a first for the company. Then, earlier this month, SpaceX sent a used Dragon cargo capsule back to space for the first time ever.

But it’s the company’s strides towards sticking these rocket landings that finally made this all possible. While many of its early landing attempts were met with fiery ends, SpaceX hasn’t lost a rocket in a landing attempt since early last summer. With today’s success, the company has now landed eight rockets in a row dating back to that June explosion, save for a few launches where there wasn’t enough leftover fuel for a landing attempt. </s> It’s been a busy time for Elon Musk and SpaceX, lately. Earlier this week, the company launched 64 satellites (and a art project known as the Orbital Reflector) in what was the largest rideshare mission in history. The mission was also historic because it involved a booster making its third successful landing. And this was after Musk released more details about his proposed BFR, henceforth known as the “Starship”

And earlier today (Wednesday Dec. 5th), SpaceX launched its sixteenth Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-16) to the International Space Station (ISS). While the deployment of the Dragon spacecraft was successful, the first stage booster did not make it back to the landing pad. After suffering from an apparent malfunction in one of its grid fins, the booster fell into the sea – but remained intact and will be retrieved.

The mission lifted off at 10:16 am PST (01:16 p.m. EST), from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Dragon spacecraft, which had previously been used for the CRS-10 mission in February of 2017, carried more than 2,540 kg (5,600 lbs) of supplies and payloads. Among these were materials that are critical to supporting the ongoing research and investigations aboard the ISS.

As with previous launches, the company began live-streaming the launch via webcast. About seven minutes after liftoff, the second stage and Dragon spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9’s first stage and proceeded to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). At 10:26 am PST (01:26 pm EST), SpaceX announced “Second stage engine burn complete. Dragon confirmed in good orbit,” followed shortly thereafter by confirmation that its solar arrays had deployed.

The first stage then began descending towards Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This was to be the twenty-seventh time that SpaceX had managed to successfully retrieve a first stage booster. However, 7 minutes and 25 seconds after the launch, the first stage began tumbling uncontrollably towards the surface. This was apparently due to the failure of one of the grid fins, which stabilize the first stage during its descent.

Luckily, the mission controllers were able to stabilize the rocket in time with some bursts from the engine, bringing the first stage in for a soft landing on water off the coast of Florida. At 10:34 am PST (0:34 EST), Musk tweeted the apparent cause of the failed landing and addressed possible changes to avoid similar problems in the future.

“Grid fin hydraulic pump stalled, so Falcon landed just out to sea. Appears to be undamaged & is transmitting data. Recovery ship dispatched.” he said, adding later, “Pump is single string. Some landing systems are not redundant, as landing is considered ground safety critical, but not mission critical. Given this event, we will likely add a backup pump & lines.”

Engines stabilized rocket spin just in time, enabling an intact landing in water! Ships en route to rescue Falcon. pic.twitter.com/O3h8eCgGJ7 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2018

Musk also posted the video of the first stage’s descent, which showed it spinning as it fell to Earth, how its spin rate was slowly arrested with correctional thrusts, and how it touched down on the ocean and fell sideways into the water. Musk also indicated that ships were en route to retrieve the booster. When asked if the booster would be reused, Musk replied, “We may use it for an internal SpaceX mission.”

While the first stage booster did not land as intended, the fact that it survived the descent is no small feat. In addition, this should not distract from the fact that the launch itself went by the numbers. Currently, the Dragon spacecraft is on schedule to arrive at the ISS by Saturday, Dec. 8th. Once there, the crew will use the station’s 17.6 m (57.7 ft) robotic arm (aka. Canadarm2) to capture the Dragon spacecraft and attach it to the orbiting laboratory.

The arrival of the Dragon spacecraft will also be the subject of a live webcast. Coverage will begin at about 02:00 a.m. PST (0:500 a.m. EST) with the capture expected to happen about 1 hour later.

In the meantime, you catch the replay of the launch here:

Further Reading: SpaceX, Twitter, ArsTechnica </s> This mission is called BulgariaSat-1 and will carry Bulgaria's first geostationary communications satellite into a high geostationary orbit around the Earth. It's launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and a drone ship called "Of Course I Still Love You" will be waiting in the Atlantic Ocean for the Falcon 9's first-stage landing. If things don't go as planned, there's another launch window tomorrow at 2:10 PM ET.

This isn't the only SpaceX launch that's happening this weekend, though. On Sunday, a Falcon 9 will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying 10 satellites for the company Iridium. Liftoff is set for 1:25 PM PT, and the company will once again attempt to land the first stage of the rocket.

It's not the first time SpaceX has flown and landed a flight-proven rocket; that happened on March 30. But rockets are the most expensive part of spaceflight; by reusing Falcon 9 first stages, SpaceX is cutting costs considerably. Reusable components are crucial to the future of human spaceflight, and SpaceX is certainly making steady and significant improvements in that regard.

Update, 6/23/2017, 1:05 PM: SpaceX tweeted that the ground team is taking additional time for checks. New liftoff time is 3:10 PM ET.
SpaceX successfully places the SES-10 telecommunications satellite on a geostationary transfer orbit. The event is notable because of the implied economic cost savings of reusing, for the first time, a used Falcon 9 first stage which had previously been recovered. That first stage had previously launched a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station and landed on an autonomous drone ship during the CRS-8 mission.