Almost three years after a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rocket blew up on the launch pad, Elon Musk\u2019s rocket company pulled off a do-over launch for its customer.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket took off at 7:23 p.m. local time Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida carrying a communication satellite into orbit for Israel\u2019s Space Communication Ltd. Since a September 2016 pre-launch blast destroyed one of Spacecom\u2019s Amos satellites, Musk\u2019s company is flying this one for free, according to the blog Ars Technica.<\/p>\n
The Tuesday mission offers Musk a chance for redemption after the 2016 explosion cost both his closely held company and its customer dearly. China\u2019s Beijing Xinwei Group scrapped plans for its $285 million acquisition of Spacecom, and the company lost its service agreements with Facebook Inc. and Eutelsat Communications SA, which were going to use the Amos-6 satellite to provide Internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
SpaceX owed either $50 million in compensation or a future launch of another satellite for Spacecom, according to a statement the Israeli company issued days after the blast. It took 15 months for the pad to be restored.<\/p>\n
Spacecom designed the satellite flown on Tuesday, called Amos-17, using Boeing Co.\u2019s advanced digital payload technology. It will provide broadcast, broadband, mobility and data services across Africa, according to SpaceX\u2019s mission press kit.<\/p>\n
The Amos-17 satellite deployed roughly 31 minutes after liftoff. Unlike in many previous launches, SpaceX will not try to recover the rocket\u2019s first stage, which flew twice in 2018.<\/p>\n
But SpaceX did catch the rocket fairing in a boat called \u201cMs Tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX sent up the first batch of its own satellites earlier this year, a key step toward creating a constellation that beams broadband to under-served areas across the globe. Musk is counting on the service to become a major revenue source.<\/p>\n
SpaceX set a company record in 2018 with 21 launches for customers. Tuesday\u2019s launch was the company\u2019s 10th this year.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk\u2019s rocket company pulled off a do-over launch for its customer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":255843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[11373,11375],"class_list":["post-315669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-elon-musk","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}