Wednesday, August 7, 2019

SpaceX Launches Yet Another Falcon 9 Into Space

Hawthorne-based SpaceX has again sent another payload into space, this time from Florida, where it launched the AMOS-17 satellite for Spacecomm from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. According to SpaceX, the launch was the third flight for the Falcon 9 used in the launch, and represents its 25th reflight of one of its rockets. The liftoff happened at 7:23 p.m. EDT, with a deployment of the AMOS-17 satellite approximately 31 minutes after liftoff. The launch is the last for that particular Falcon 9, which previously was used in the Telstar-19 VANTAGE mission in July 2018 and the Es'hail-2 mission in November 2018. As part of the launch, SpaceX also recovered the part of the fairing used to protect the satellite during launch; the company is looking to also re-use those in future launches, in order to further reduce its launch costs.