Watch SpaceX launch its first of two Falcon 9 rockets this week
This morning, SpaceX is set to launch another one of its Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg, California, sending 10 satellites into orbit for communications company Iridium. It’s the first of two launches the company plans to attempt this week on opposite coasts of the US. And SpaceX will try to land both rockets on floating drone ships after takeoff — the first in the Pacific and the other in the Atlantic.
Today’s launch is familiar to SpaceX, since the company has basically done it before. SpaceX holds a contract with Iridium to launch 75 of the company’s Iridium NEXT satellites, in order to create a constellation of 66 telecommunications probes in lower Earth orbit, with nine in-orbit spares. The company launched the first 10 of these…
