This was the biggest satellite SpaceX has ever carried into space.
It’s become almost routine now – but SpaceX has completed another successful launch of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket booster.
In fact, this was the fiftieth launch of the pioneering spacecraft, that’s designed to be guided back down to a landing pad after delivering its payload to orbit.
Many space companies take a long time to successfully record 50 launches – but the private space company has managed it in just eight years.
This launch was tasked with delivering a Hispasat Spanish-language telecoms and broadband satellite into orbit and took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The satellite, which is about the size of a city bus, is the largest that SpaceX has yet delivered into space.
It’s designed to extend communications and television signal across much of Europe and Northwest Africa.
Falcon 9 flight 50 launches tonight, carrying Hispasat for Spain. At 6 metric tons and almost the size of a city bus, it will be the largest geostationary satellite we’ve ever flown.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2018
After successfully delivering it to orbit, SpaceX did not attempt to land the Falcon 9 booster because of unfavourable weather. However, the company has become adept at recycling its boosters for future launches. This approach has dramatically lowered the cost of space missions and allows SpaceX to charge a lower price to third-party customers who want their wwares shipped into space.
Last month, SpaceX successfully tested its Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Falcon Heavy is described as the ‘world’s most powerful rocket’, with more than twice the lifting capacity of any existing launcher.
It carried a cherry red Tesla Roadster, as well as ‘Starman’ – SpaceX’s astronaut dummy, past low-Earth orbit and into the reaches of space.
As well as making space travel affordable and commonplace, SpaceX is also attempting to land humans on Mars and turn our race into a “multi-planetary species”.
