Launch News SpaceX Falcon 9 with Iridium-3 (12:37 UTC, October 9th)

[Nicholas Kang]

Static fire was completed on October 5th.

[ame="https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/915932492460380160"]SpaceX on Twitter: "Static fire test of Falcon 9 complete—targeting October 9 launch of Iridium-3 from Vandenberg AFB in California."[/ame]

Orbital ATK built those satellites.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwK-HX3JWtw"]OrbitalATK and Iridium NEXT - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Another successful mission.

 

[ADSWNJ]

Yup - making it look routine now. Still ... there were some awesome night-launch shots, the blue flash at T-2 secs, the separation burns ... all really pretty.

 

[Andy44]

The data readouts on those videos drive me nuts. I can easily conceptualize meters per second or miles per hour, but km/hr requires me to constantly convert in my head.

---------- Post added at 09:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 PM ----------

Also, just read a headline that said this was the fourteenth Falcon launch of 2017! That's a pretty stout launch rate for a rocket some people (including some Orbinauts) said would never fly.

 

[ADSWNJ]

Check out this video from around 0:43 onwards:

You can watch the exquisite, magical, ethereal interplay of the rocket plumes of the dueling stages, left going to orbit, right retro-thrusting on the way back to another perfect landing.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Also, just read a headline that said this was the fourteenth Falcon launch of 2017! That's a pretty stout launch rate for a rocket some people (including some Orbinauts) said would never fly.

And they haven't crashed a returning stage since June 2016. Every flight since then where they had sufficient fuel to attempt a stage recovery, they got the stage back. That on top of the launch rate is extremely impressive.

 

[jgrillo2002]

Not a fan of SpaceX Nor musk but was a good launch