This summer is shaping up to be packed full of SpaceX launches, with another one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets set to take off later this evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This time, the vehicle is tasked with launching a communications satellite into a high orbit for the company Intelsat. And it comes just a week after SpaceX’s “doubleheader” weekend, when it launched two rockets in just 49 hours.
Unlike most SpaceX launches lately, this rocket will not attempt a landing after takeoff. The change likely has to do with the satellite that the company is launching. The probe, called Intelsat 35e, weighs more than 13,000 pounds, making it one of the heaviest satellites SpaceX has ever launched. It’s also going to a particularly high orbit above Earth called geostationary orbit — a path 22,000 miles up. Those two factors combined mean the Falcon 9 will have to burn a lot of fuel to get the satellite where it needs to go, so there won’t be much propellant leftover to perform a controlled landing.
Just a week after SpaceX’s “doubleheader” weekend
Still, if the mission gets off the ground this weekend, it’ll mark the third launch the company has done in just under two weeks. That’s a pretty impressive launch frequency for SpaceX, or really any commercial spaceflight company. Typically, the number of launches a company will pull off each year hovers somewhere in the single digits or maybe a dozen or so at best. But this launch will be SpaceX’s 10th mission of the year — and it’s only July. Last year, the company successfully completed eight launches. SpaceX has already surpassed that number and there’s still half a year left to go.
Although SpaceX won’t attempt a landing this time, the company has seen unwavering success with its rocket recoveries this year. Out of the nine missions that have launched so far in 2017, SpaceX attempted to recover seven of those rockets. And all have successfully landed, either at the company’s ground-based landing zone in Florida or one of the company’s two drone ships floating in the ocean. As of now, SpaceX has pulled off 13 successful rocket landings.