SpaceX’s 50th Falcon 9 rocket flight took off from Florida’s Space Coast shortly after midnight Tuesday with the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite, firing into a moonlit night sky with 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
Nine Merlin engines steered the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket eastward from Cape Canaveral, and the SpaceX-built launcher’s upper stage delivered the Hispasat 30W-6 communications craft to a geostationary transfer orbit around 33 minutes after liftoff.
The Falcon 9 blasted off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) Tuesday.
Read our full story on the launch for details.
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