SpaceX on Thursday (March 16) successfully launched a communications satellite into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States.Falcon 9 rocket took off at 2 a.m. (GMT 06:00) carrying the EchoStar XXIII. It is a commercial communications satellite for EchoStar Corporation.
The satellite will be positioned in orbit more than 35,000 km above the earth and provide telecommunications service to Brazil, company’s officials said.
However, SpcaeX stated that it will not attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage after the launch “due to mission requirements”.
The Falcon 9 took off from NASA’s historic launch pad 39A, which is the origin of the pioneering United States spaceflights that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the space shuttle missions that started back in 1981 and ended in 2011.
Lost Chandrayaan-1 found after 8 years
Billionaire Elon Musk founded the SpaceX. The company is emerging as the leader of the modern commercial space industry after becoming the first to send a private cargo to the International Space Station in 2010.
The California based company has experienced two expensive disasters in the past two years.
In June 2015 a rocket exploded after its liftoff that obliterated a Dragon cargo ship packed with provisions bound for the space station.
The second disaster occurred last year in September, when a launch pad blast destroyed a rocket and its satellite payload.
More than two trillion galaxies in the Universe
AMandeep
