Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13G geostationary communications satellite. Follow us on Twitter.
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SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:22 a.m. EDT (0522 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral with Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13G television broadcasting satellite. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster landed on a downrange drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Ground teams rolled the Falcon 9 to pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday, the day after SpaceX launched a powerful Falcon Heavy rocket from pad 39A a few miles up the coast. The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 was raised vertical on pad 40 Wednesday afternoon ahead of the overnight launch window.
Forecasters from the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predicted a 90% probability of favorable weather for liftoff, with only a slight chance of cumulus clouds that might create a threat of lightning.
Built by Airbus, the roughly 10,000-pound (4.5-metric ton) Hotbird 13G spacecraft will beam hundreds of television and radio channels across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Hotbird 13G is the twin satellite of Hotbird 13F, which launched Oct. 15 on a previous SpaceX Falcon 9 mission. The two Hotbirds are the first satellites to be built on Airbus’s new Eurostar Neo spacecraft design, incorporating upgrades in propulsion, thermal control, and electrical systems.
During Thursday morning’s countdown, the Falcon 9 launcher was filled with a million pounds of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants in the final 35 minutes before liftoff.
After teams verified technical and weather parameters were all “green” for launch, the nine Merlin 1D main engines on the first stage booster flashed to life with the help of an ignition fluid called triethylaluminum/triethylborane, or TEA-TEB. Once the engines ramped up to full throttle, hydraulic clamps opened to release the Falcon 9 for its climb into space.
The nine main engines produced 1.7 million pounds of thrust for about two-and-a-half minutes, propelling the Falcon 9 and Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13G communications satellite into the upper atmosphere. Then the booster stage — tail number B1067 in SpaceX’s fleet — shut down and separated from the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
The booster extended titanium grid fins and pulsed cold gas thrusters to orient itself for a tail-first entry back into the atmosphere, before reigniting its engines for a braking burn and a final landing burn, targeting a vertical descent to the drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” parked about 420 miles (about 675 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral.
The successful rocket landing on the drone ship marked the completion of the booster’s seventh flight to space. The booster debuted June 3, 2021, with the launch of a Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station, and launched two astronaut crews into space on NASA’s Crew-3 and Crew-4 missions. It has also launched the Turksat 5B communications satellite, another space station resupply mission, and most recently a batch of Starlink internet satellites on Sept. 18.
For the Hotbird 13G mission, the Falcon 9 rocket fired its upper stage engine two times to inject the spacecraft into an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit with an apogee, or high point, more than 30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) above Earth.
Hotbird 13G separated from the Falcon 9 rocket about 36 minutes into the mission.
After deploying from the Falcon 9 launcher to begin its journey toward geostationary orbit, Hotbird 13G will unfurl solar panels and use PPS5000 plasma orbit-raising thrusters developed by the…
Read More: SpaceX launches TV broadcasting satellite for Eutelsat – Spaceflight Now