SpaceX Launches Third Falcon 9 Within Two Weeks Period

SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon 9 on July 5 from its facility located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch is the third in merely two weeks since it accomplished other two missions between June 23 and June 25. The Intelsat-35e mission involves launching of an orbital broadcasting satellite which is intended to provide high-powered network capability to enhance the broadband and video applications across the regions of Caribbean, some parts of Europe and the entire Africa continent.

SpaceX has so far launched ten missions to space with the latest delivering the Intelsat’s fourth communication satellite. SpaceX had initially set to launch the rocket on July 2 but the process was aborted the last minute due to a technical error.

Another attempt on July 3 also failed at the final stage of the launch. The SpaceX engineers have been working on the problem and after a thorough investigation, the problem was detected on the rocket guidance systems and not the rocket itself. After several reviews on the systems, the team of engineers managed to customize the codes in the automated checking system to match the actual figures.

SpaceX has also successfully recovered its recycled Dragon spacecraft which splashed in Pacific Ocean on July 3 after resupplying the mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The latest deployment of Intelsat 35e satellite into its targeted geostationary transfer orbit further adds to the overall SpaceX’s impressive track record for this year.

SpaceX is hitting its target it set since 2016 of launching 18 missions annually. The company has already accomplished 10 space missions in just six months. SpaceX has not disclosed the exact number of launches it is planning to complete this year. But Gwynne Shotwell, the Chief Operating Officer said that the firm is targeting about 24 launches in 2017.

Other competitors including Evry, the France-based Arianespace is launching between 11 t0 12 space missions annually. Arianespace has successfully launched more satellite missions into geostationary orbit that what SpaceX has done, though fewer satellites to the low-Earth orbit.