1st LD: SpaceX launches satellite, attempts rocket landing on drone ship
Xinhua, March 5, 2016 Adjust font size:
U.S. space firm SpaceX launched on Friday evening a European commercial communications satellite into space.
The California-based company will also make another attempt to land the spent first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Falcon 9 rocket shot into the evening sky at 6:35 p.m. EST (2335 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying a commercial communications satellite called SES-9, which will deliver television and high-speed broadband services to the Asia-Pacific region.
The Falcon 9's first stage separated about 2.5 minutes after launch and will then perform a series of engine burns for an experimental landing on the "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
SpaceX achieved one successful soft landing in December last year on a land-based pad at Cape Canaveral, but its three previous attempts to land the first stage on an ocean drone ship -- in January 2015, April 2015, and this January, respectively -- all failed. Enditem