FALCON 9 ROCKET FROM SPACEX LAUNCHES LIVE FROM VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE...
Elon Musk's Space X rocket conducted its final launch of 2017 with a spectacular take off. Friday Dec. 22nd the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base to deploy ten more Iridium-NEXT communications satellites. The launch, which occurred at 17:27:23 Pacific Time (01:27 UTC on Saturday), took place 61 seconds after a Japanese H-IIA rocket is lifted off on the other side of the Pacific.
Friday’s launch carried the fourth group of ten satellites in Iridium Communications’ second-generation Iridium-NEXT constellation. Iridium provides global mobile satellite communications through a fleet of satellites in low Earth orbit. The company was formed in 2001 as Iridium Satellite LLC, taking over the assets of Motorola-backed Iridium SSC, which had deployed the first-generation Iridium constellation but bankrupted itself in the process.
To provide worldwide communications, the Iridium constellation uses six orbital planes with eleven satellites per plane. As wellhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYwlQf209jA as sixty-six operational satellites, Iridium keeps several more spacecraft available as on-orbit spares. The first-generation constellation was deployed between 1997 and 2002, with satellites built by Lockheed Martin around the LM-700A platform, which had an expected design life of seven years. The satellites significantly out-performed this expectation, with some operating for over twenty years before replacements finally began to launch earlier this year.
SpaceX is expected to begin their 2018 launch program on 4 January (Eastern Time – 5 January UTC) with the delayed launch of the Zuma mission for Northrup Grumman aboard a Falcon 9. Originally scheduled for November, Zuma slipped into 2018 following concerns about the rocket’s payload fairing. The maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket is also planned for January, along with up to two more Falcon 9 launches – carrying the SES-16, or GovSat-1, communications satellite, and the Paz radar imaging spacecraft. SpaceX’s next Iridium launch is expected in February.
