SpaceX carried out its milestone 200th orbital mission on Friday (Dec. 16), sending up a pair of powerful new communications satellites.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Friday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT).
The first stage, having done its job, came back down and landed safely on a SpaceX drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean just under nine minutes after liftoff. It was the reusable booster's eighth touchdown overall.
The second stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the O3b m Power satellites 1 and 2 satellites toward their intended Medium Earth Orbits (M EO). The satellites were deployed on schedule about two hours after launch.
O3b m Power 1 and 2 are owned and operated by SES, a Luxembourgian-French satellite telecommunications network company. The pair of spacecraft are the first of a planned constellation of an initial 11 high-throughput and low-latency satellites to provide multiple terabits of global broadband connectivity from M EO.
Each satellite is based on a Boeing BSS-702X satellite bus and features phased array antennas that can provide up to 5,000 spot beams to distribute hundreds of gigabits of capacity to users on the ground. SES plans to launch six more O3b m Power satellites in 2023 and three in 2024.
The mission marked SpaceX’s 200th orbital launch overall. These began with the Falcon 1, which flew five times between 2006 and 2009, leading to the first liftoff of the Falcon 9 on June 4, 2010. The Falcon 9 first stage is powered by nine Merlin engines, a fact contributing to the rocket's name. The second stage uses a single, vacuum-optimized Merlin for completing the journey to orbit.
The launch rate of the Falcon 9 has increased dramatically over the years as the rocket has proven its reliability, versatility and reusability, while also evolving into its final Block 5 version. The rocket has now flown 191 missions, including a record 57 in 2022 alone.
Four SpaceX orbital missions have been flown by the powerful Falcon Heavy, which employs three modified Falcon 9 first stages.
There will be little time for SpaceX to celebrate the 200-mission milestone. The company is scheduled to launch a big batch of its Starlink broadband satellites from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday (Dec. 17).
This mission is part of a busy stretch for SpaceX. The company launched the private Japanese Hakuto R moon lander on Sunday (Dec. 11) and was scheduled to loft the SWOT water-monitoring satellite for NASA early Friday morning.
About Falcon 9
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is the vehicle that brings satellites, Dragon cargo spacecraft and Crew Dragon spacecraft to orbit.
Among its many uses, SpaceX regularly launches Falcon 9 to bring its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Dragon made the first private spacecraft visit ever there in October 2012 and has run more than 25 cargo missions in the years since. Since 2020, SpaceX also used Falcon 9 for crewed missions to the ISS, on behalf of NASA and other customers.
Falcon 9 is built as a reusable system, in line with SpaceX founder Elon Musk's desire to drive down the cost of spaceflight. The rocket's first stage comes down on land, or on a drone ship nearby the launch pad. It is the ride of choice for SpaceX's Starlink satellite system for broadband service and has been tasked for security missions on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office.
Falcon's 9 specifications
— Height: 229.6 feet (70 meters)
— Diameter: 12 feet (3.7 m)
— Mass: 1,194,000 lbs. (541,300 kg)
— Payload to low Earth orbit (LEO): 28,991 lbs. (13,150 kg)
— Payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO): 10,692 lbs. (4,850 kg)
— First stage: Burn time: 162 seconds. Thrust at sea level: 1.53 million lbs. or 6,806 kilonewtons (kN) Thrust in vacuum: 1.6695 million lbs. (7,426 kN)
— Second stage: Burn time: 397 seconds. Thrust: 210,000 lbs. (934 kN)
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