by SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on its record 14th mission on Saturday (October 8), sending two commercial communications satellites into orbit.
The Hawk 9carrying Intelsat’s Galaxy 33 and Galaxy 34 satellites, lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida on Saturday at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT).
The Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth and landed on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship about 8.5 minutes after launch. The robotic ship was in the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred miles off the coast of Florida.
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It was the 14th launch and landing for this booster, according to a SpaceX mission description (opens in new tab). The rocket previously helped launch the GPS III-3 and Turksat 5A satellites, the Space Shuttle-2 mission and 10 large batches of SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites.
The fourteen missions is the record for a Falcon 9 first stage, which was first set just last month during a launch that carried the BlueWalker 3 communications satellite and 34 Starlinks.
Galaxy 33 deployed about 33 minutes after liftoff, and Galaxy 34 followed suit five minutes later, SpaceX confirmed via Twitter (opens in new tab).
The pair “are the next satellites in Intelsat’s comprehensive Galaxy fleet renewal plan, a new generation of technology that will provide Intelsat Media customers in North America with high-performance media distribution capabilities and unparalleled cable headend penetration,” Intelsat wrote in Luxembourg. a statement (opens in new tab). “It is critical to the US strategy to clear Intelsat’s C-band.”
Saturday’s launch was SpaceX’s third in four days. On Wednesday, the company launched the Crew-5 astronaut mission for NASA as well as a batch of 52 Starlink satellites.
Saturday’s flight was originally scheduled to take off Thursday afternoon (Oct. 6), but the Falcon 9 an auto-cancellation started shortly (opens in new tab) before the scheduled take-off. The crash was caused by a small helium leak, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk he said via Twitter on Thursday (opens in new tab). SpaceX then pushed the launch to Saturday to perform additional vehicle checks.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or up Facebook (opens in new tab).
