Video: Falcon 9 joins rising moon in the sky during middle-of-the-night launch

June 4, 2018 Stephen Clark

Video credit: Steven Young/Spaceflight Now

Flying with a reused first stage booster, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast early Monday with a commercial communications satellite for the Luxembourg-based operator SES.

The Falcon 9 took off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) and hauled the SES 12 telecom satellite into orbit, kicking off a mission to link the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific and Australia with video, data and broadband services.

Monday’s launch was the 56th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and SpaceX’s 62nd launch overall. It was be the company’s 11th launch of the year, and the 13th time SpaceX has reused a Falcon booster.

See our Mission Status Center for details on the launch.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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