SpaceX waited until the sun set to send up a Falcon 9 to light up the night with a near full moon on Monday.
A Falcon 9 carrying the Hispasat Amazonas Nexus satellite took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:32 p.m., three hours into a four-hour window and one day after weather scrubbed its first chance for liftoff.
The first-stage booster made its sixth flight having previously flown on SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 and three Starlink missions. The company was able to stick the landing again on its droneship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean.
The launch was the seventh for SpaceX from Florida in 2023 and ninth overall having also launched twice from California.
The Space Coast had 57 orbital launches in 2023 and is forecast to see between 86 and 92 liftoffs in 2023 among all rocket companies. The majority of those will be from SpaceX, but United Launch Alliance has several missions slated including the first launch of its new Vulcan Centaur rocket that arrived to Florida in January. Also expected in the coming months is the first-ever launch for Relativity Space, which is expected to perform the first test fire of its 3D-print Terran 1 rocket as soon as this week.
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