SpaceX launches European Commission’s Galileo satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center
SpaceX hit some notable milestones with the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Saturday. Most notably, the weekend flight marked the first time that the European Commission’s Galileo satellites (similar to the United State’s Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites) launched onboard an American-made rocket and from U.S. soil.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at 8:34 p.m. EDT (0034 UTC). The first stage booster on this mission, tail number B1060 in the SpaceX fleet, launched for a 20th and final time. SpaceX did not plan to recover B1060 “due to the additional performance requirement to deliver the payload to medium Earth orbit.”
“The last time a first stage was expended during a Falcon 9 mission was 146 flights ago in November 2022,” SpaceX said in a social media post following the launch. “On most Falcon 9 missions, enough propellant remains in the first stage after stage separation to enable landing, recovery, and ultimately reuse on future missions.”
SpaceX added that it is in the process of qualifying both its boosters and its payload fairings for up to 40 missions each. They credit the data gathered on Falcon vehicle flights to furthering their development of the significantly larger and entirely reusable Starship rocket and their stated goal of “making life multi-planetary.”
