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Space Exploration Technologies Corp. launched a lot of satellites for longtime customer Iridium Communications Inc. early Wednesday, marking the 14th 2018 mission.
Falcon 9 rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central coast of California at 4:39 am local time. The rocket successfully deployed 10 Iridium NEXT satellites in low Earth orbit about an hour after launch, Iridium said.
SpaceX claimed to have landed the first leg of the Falcon 9 on the drone "Just Read the Instructions" in the Pacific Ocean. also made his fourth attempt at a first in the history of spaceflight: Retrieve a used fairing, which locks the payload aboard a rocket. The company has equipped a ship dubbed Mr. Steven's big nets to capture the fairing that is falling on Earth. On Wednesday, rough seas and wind shear thwarted the effort, but SpaceX plans to persist, using what he's learned to perfect the technique.
The recovery of the fairing is part of SpaceX's goal to reduce launch costs. rocket as possible. Earlier this month, SpaceX showed photos of new large nets attached to the ship. The effort to tear off the fairings remains at "the experimental stage," said SpaceX engineer, John Insprucker, during the company's webcast. "We are still learning how to catch a fairing out of the air."
The company headed by billionaire Elon Musk is targeting about 30 missions in total this year, compared to a record 18 in 2017. The valuation of SpaceX has climbed to about $ 25 billion with a recent round of financing, putting it on the right way to become the third start-up in the US after Uber Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc.
The launch was the seventh of eight planned for the deployment of Iridium's newest constellation of 75 NEXT satellites $ 3 billion. The explosion dissipated from July 20, prompting Iridium to postpone its quarterly earnings report to July 31.
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