SpaceX launches new satellite
SpaceX launches new satellite
Cape Canaveral – Space Exploration (SpaceX) Technologies, founded by South African-born Elon Musk, blasted off a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday to put a commercial communications satellite into orbit.
The 68m-tall rocket lifted off from its seaside launch pad at 7am South African time, dashing through partly cloudy night-time skies as it headed toward space.
Tucked inside the rocket’s nose cone was the second of two satellites owned by Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Holdings, or AsiaSat.
The first satellite, AsiaSat 8, was delivered into an orbit 35 700km above Earth on August 5. Both satellites were built by Space Systems/Loral, a Palo Alto, California-based subsidiary of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates.
The two launches had cost AsiaSat about $110 million (R1.17 trillion).
Privately owned SpaceX, as the company is known, planned to launch the second satellite, AsiaSat 6, two weeks ago, but delayed the flight to recheck the rocket’s systems after an unrelated accident that claimed the company’s prototype Falcon 9R reusable lander during a test flight on August 22.
Source: iol.co.za