SpaceX again successfully lands rocket after satellite launch

The successfully deployed payload is known as JCSAT-16 and is a commercial communications satellite developed by Space Systems Loral for the SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation.

Making SpaceX’s eighth flight in just six months, the 229-foot-tall Falcon 9’s nine first-stage engine ignited with a crackling roar at 1:26 a.m. EDT (GMT-4), quickly pushing the booster away from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The sextet of intact and upright landings of the recovered 156-foot-tall (47-meter) booster count as stunning successes towards SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk’s vision of rocket reusability and radically slashing the cost of sending rockets to space by recovering the boosters and eventually reflying them with new payloads from paying customers.

This launch saw SpaceX tasked with delivering JCSAT-16, a Japanese communications satellite, into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Bringing the first stage booster rocket back to the launch pad required further lateral and deceleration maneuvers.

SpaceX has clinched yet another Falcon 9 landing. It has achieved victory for the sixth time tonight with the successful launch and landing.

The vertical landing on the reconverted deck barge in the Atlantic Ocean was especially challenging because the JCSAT-16 satellite had to be carried into a highly elliptical orbit some 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth’s equator. Drone ships require less to complete one.

This makes the score of its victories, rockets landed successfully on sea, four. None of the six landed rockets have yet been reused in subsequent missions. JCSAT-16 carries Ku-band and Ka-Band transponders and will function as an in-orbit backup satellite to existing services in the Ku and Ka bands. At least eight more missions are believed to be planned before the end of the year.