The 100th launch carried a weather satellite for Argentina into orbit.
SpaceX successfully launched and landed yet another Falcon 9 rocket yesterday marking a couple of important milestones for the company.
The companys Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 7.18 P.M. Eastern Time with the SAOCOM-1B satellite on board, the company's 15th launch of 2020.
About eight minutes after the launch, the first stage of the Falcon 9 then returned to Cape Canaveral to touch down safely at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1). This was the fourth successful launch and landing for this booster.
Impressively, this was the 100th launch in total for Elon Musk's company since its first attempt in 2006, and its 96th successful flight. Those 100 launches comprise five Falcon 1 launches (with three failures), 92 Falcon 9 launches (one failure), and three Falcon Heavy launches (no failures).
The SAOCOM-1B satellite on board this mission was an Earth observation satellite for Argentinas space agency, the second of two satellites designed to use radar to look for potential disasters from an altitude of 620 kilometers. Also on board were two smaller satellites, GNOMES-1 and Tyvak-0172.
This launch not only marked a century of launches for SpaceX, but also 58 successful rocket landings for the company, both on its ocean barges and back on land, and the 42nd reflight of a first stage booster.
The launch was notable for another reason too. This was the first polar launch from Florida since 1969, with the Falcon 9 rocket performing a maneuver shortly after launch (called a dogleg maneuver) to turn right and head south along the eastern Florida coast.
The last polar launch from Florida was a weather satellite for the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), the precursor to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Their satellite called ESSA-9 launched on February 26, 1969 and was operational until November 1972.
This was SpaceX's 15th flight of 2020.
Since then, polar launches from the U.S. have taken place from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. However, wildfires in California that can damage the launch site meant that alternatives were sought back in 2016.
Any polar launch from Florida would need to avoid dropping debris on inhabitated areas, such as Cuba, where a cow was supposedly killed by falling debris in 1960. SpaceX has been allowed to conduct such launches as their rockets have an automatic safety system that self-destructs the rocket in the event of a failures.
SpaceX was also close to hitting yet another milestone on Sunday, with a launch of another batch of 60 Starlink satellites in the companies space internet mega constellation. This would have been the first double launch since 1966, but the mission was postponed until tomorrow, Tuesday, September 1.
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SpaceX Just Launched Its 100th Rocket In A Major Milestone For The Company - Forbes