This Saturday, four months after an accident in Florida, SpaceX successfully launched its rocket, Falcon 9 from California, which carries ten small satellite communications company Iridium.
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The Falcon 9 was fired from the air base of Vandenberg at 17:54, as was planned. The first phase of the rocket 70 feet high, separated from the rest of the launcher to two minutes, and 27 seconds after launch and then began his return to Earth.
On several occasions, fired its retrorockets to decrease your speed and seven minutes and 49 seconds later landed on a floating platform in the Pacific.
[One of the engines of the Falcon 9]
This is the sixth success of SpaceX with this delicate maneuver. In this way, the company aims to strongly reduce their costs for putting material in orbit through the recovery of the most expensive part of the launcher.
An hour after the launch, the second phase of the Falcon 9 deployed the deiz a satellite of 600 kg of the signature Iridium in a low orbit at 620 km altitude, confirmed on Twitter the owner and founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk.
These are the first satellites of a series of at least 70 that SpaceX must launch the signature Iridium until the beginning of 2018, for the purpose of modernisation of its new network called Iridium Next.
test fire
This release is seen as a crucial test to verify if SpaceX managed to identify and correct the cause seemingly complex that caused the accident on 1 September.
At the beginning of January, the company concluded that the accident, which was recorded during a rehearsal in the land of the engines, was caused by the failure of a container of helium to pressure that is located inside the tank of liquid oxygen of the second stage of the rocket.
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nevertheless, an important consultation group of NASA experts expressed their reservations about the process of fuel supply of the Falcon 9. In its annual report 2016 recommended to the space agency to review the operation of the system prior to the planned releases for the future.
The explosion of September not only destroyed the rocket launcher but that also damaged a satellite of us $ 200 million of israeli society Spacecom.
A channel of this satellite was to be used by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, with the French operator Eutelsat, to provide access to the internet in sub-saharan Africa.
The accident occurred fifteen months after a first explosion of a rocket Falcon 9 shortly after its take-off, the 28 of June 2015, that destroyed the Dragon spacecraft that had to go to the ISS, in the framework of a contract with the NASA.
ASS
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