SpaceX launches communications satellite, lands rocket at sea

SpaceX put a communications satellite into orbit on November 3 and landed a rocket on a ship at sea.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13G satellite launched Thursday at 1:22 am EDT (0522 GMT) from Space Force Station Cape Canaveral, Florida.
According to Space.com, Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth after just under nine minutes, landing on SpaceX’s Just Read the Instructions droneship, which had been stationed in the Atlantic Ocean as planned.
This was the seventh launch and landing of this particular first stage.
“The Falcon 9 first stage booster that supports this mission has previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25 and one Starlink mission,” SpaceX said. It is written in the mission description before launch.
Crew-3 and Crew-4 were astronaut missions to the International Space Station, and CRS-22 and CRS-25 were unmanned cargo flights to orbital laboratories.
Meanwhile, Hotbird 13G continued to fly over the upper stage of Falcon 9, successfully placing the satellite into geostationary transfer orbit about 36 minutes after takeoff.
The satellite will be built by Airbus Defense and Space and operated by France-based telecommunications company Eutelsat. The satellite will eventually be placed in a geostationary orbit about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) above Earth.
The Hotbird 13G joins the twin Hotbird 13F, which launched into its patch of space real estate aboard the Falcon 9 last month. This two of her spacecraft will replace the existing three of her Hotbird satellites and will bear considerable responsibility.
The Hotbird family of satellites “forms one of Europe’s largest broadcast systems, delivering 1,000 TV channels to more than 160 million TV homes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,” said a Eutelsat representative. I am writing.
The Hotbird 13G launch was SpaceX’s second launch in about two days from Florida’s Space Coast. On November 1, Elon Musk’s company launched his USSF-44 mission for the United States Space Force from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
USSF-44 employed the Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful launcher currently in flight. The mission was her fourth for Falcon Heavy and her first since June 2019.