A pair of satellites is going up this morning on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9s. Will the rocket pull off a double-satellite launch and ocean landing as neatly as it pulled off its singles? Let’s watch and find out!
This particular Falcon 9 will be pulling double duty. It’s launching two separate communication satellites within 5 minutes of each other, first one from Eutelsat and then one from ABS.
The Falcon will be delivering those double satellites into a high, geostationary orbit. That means the rocket is coming back to the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship hot, fast, and with not a lot of extra fuel to spare. It’s also a new experimental orbit so—while SpaceX has had a pretty solid run of previous landings from geostationary orbits—success at this one is likely to be, by the company’s own admission, “difficult.”
https://gizmodo.com/yep-spacex-is-running-out-of-room-for-its-landed-rocke-1776821076
SpaceX has been teasing that an upcoming launch will use one of those previous, successfully-landed Falcon 9’s that are now piling up in their hangar. That milestone, however, isn’t coming today. Elon Musk has suggested instead that we could finally see a Falcon 9 re-launch sometime in September or October, but no firm date is set as of yet.
Watch along with us right here at 10:29 am EDT, when the Falcon 9 and its two satellites blast off. If all goes well, we should see used-rocket number 5 piling up in the SpaceX hangar shortly after.
