Space/Florida — A SpaceX Falcon 9 has launched. The SAOCOM 1B mission is carrying the SAOCOM 1B spacecraft into orbit while also ferrying to rideshare payloads to LEO (Low Earth Orbit), PlanetiQ’s GNOMES-1 and Tyvak-0172.
The mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station using Space Launch Complex 40. This mission is SpaceX’s attempt at reaching a polar orbit from the East Coast of the United States.
The booster landed successfully around 7:30PM Eastern Standard time. You can watch the live-stream right here, comments are disabled.
SpaceX via twitter said, ‘Falcon 9’s first stage has landed at Landing Zone 1’ 10 minutes ago (at the time of this writing).
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed at Landing Zone 1 pic.twitter.com/0y5FkVqPk8
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 30, 2020
This is the fourth landing for this particular booster. Also, this is the first mission to launch anything into a polar orbit from Florida since February 26, 1969.
The SpaceX team took a 15-minute break from the live-stream to prepare for the deployment of the satellites. 60 minutes into the mission, the crew returned to the live-stream. These are some of the most advanced weather satellites that humanity has ever launched. These are microsats that weight about 39kg. Separation of the first satellite was confirmed T+ 1:01:57. The second one was confirmed to separate from the payload fairing at T+ 1:02:29.
The live-stream officially ended at 8:23PM EST.
