After a rare two-day technical delay ended an opportunity for SpaceX Breaking a great recordThe company managed to make a show with the launch of the Falcon 9 for the third time in three days and seven hours.
Thanks to a transverse alignment of orbital mechanics, the third launch of Falcon 9 lifted off last week from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) at 7:05 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Oct. 5 — five minutes after sunset. The rocket headed east, deeper in the twilight, but rose rapidly and rose into direct sunlight as it soared into space. Against the darkened skies, the exhaust plumes produced by the Falcon 9 booster and the upper stage lit up like a neon sign, creating a spectacle – though rare – becoming increasingly popular alongside SpaceX’s increasing launch cadence.
Reminiscent of a giant nebula, a jellyfish or a living creature, among other things, the width of light is produced tens to hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface and can be seen hundreds of kilometers away in all directions. Saturday’s Nebula was absolutely bright and stunning.
What made this image stand out was a new view broadcast live from the roof of a SpaceX drone, A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), which was parked in the Atlantic Ocean about 650 kilometers (approximately 400 miles) off the coast of Florida. Intentionally or unintentionally, the camera normally used to capture live views of Falcon’s boosters landing on the ASOG’s surface has been pointed in the perfect direction to capture the nebula from a unique angle – essentially sitting at the target point of a cosmic dartboard rocket.
Unlike any other orbital-class missile, this point of aim is literally a Falcon 9 booster. Nine minutes after liftoff, the nebula’s snake-like tail was still easily visible after the B1060 booster landed on the drone’s roof, aided by the light show it had created just yet.
About half an hour later, the Falcon 9 orbital upper stage successfully deployed the two geostationary communications satellites, the Galaxy 33 and Galaxy 34, from Intelsat. The pair would have weighed about 7.3 tons (about 16,000 pounds), making it one of the heaviest geostationary payloads SpaceX has ever launched. This high mass and recovery of the Falcon 9 booster limited the rocket’s performance, so the satellites were inserted into a geostationary elliptical transfer orbit (GTO) with one end about 300 km (~185 mi) and the other about 20,000 km (~12,400 mi) above The earth’s surface.
The satellites would need to use onboard thrusters and propellants to climb the rest of the way into 35,800 km (22,250 mi) circular orbits, where their orbital velocity matches the Earth’s rotation exactly so they can fly over the region of their choice. In this case, both satellites will provide satellite TV service across the United States.
