{"id":13517,"date":"2018-11-13T21:15:41","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T13:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-fires-falcon-9-booster-on-pad-39a-aims-for-comsat-launch-thursday\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T21:15:41","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T13:15:41","slug":"spacex-fires-falcon-9-booster-on-pad-39a-aims-for-comsat-launch-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-fires-falcon-9-booster-on-pad-39a-aims-for-comsat-launch-thursday\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX fires Falcon 9 booster on pad 39A, aims for comsat launch Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
A plume of exhaust erupts from the flame trench at pad 39A during a hold-down firing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday night. Credit: William Harwood\/CBS News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX test-fired a Falcon 9 rocket Monday night at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, clearing the way for a launch Thursday with Qatar\u2019s Es\u2019hail 2 communications satellite, the first daytime liftoff from Florida\u2019s Space Coast in more than six months.<\/p>\n

The rocket\u2019s nine Merlin 1D first stage engines ignited at 8:30 p.m. EST Monday (0130 GMT Tuesday) and fired for several seconds as hold-down restraints kept the Falcon 9 grounded at pad 39A, the historic former starting point for numerous space shuttle launches and Saturn 5 moonshots.<\/p>\n

SpaceX recovered from an apparent aborted hotfire attempt Monday morning, reloaded kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the launcher, and accomplished the static fire after nightfall Monday.<\/p>\n

The two-stage rocket is set to blast of with a previously-flown first stage booster recovered on SpaceX\u2019s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean following the July 22 launch of the Telstar 19 VANTAGE communications satellite.<\/p>\n

The rocket will be rolled back to the hangar, connected with its commercial satellite payload, and returned to pad 39A in time for a launch window opening at 3:46 p.m. EST (2046 GMT) Thursday.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is expected to attempt another landing of the rocket after Thursday afternoon\u2019s liftoff, again aboard the drone ship \u201cOf Course I Still Love You\u201d a few hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

The payload for Thursday\u2019s launch is Es\u2019hail 2, built in Japan by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and owned by Qatar\u2019s national satellite communications company, Es\u2019hailSat. Equipped with Ku-band and Ka-band transponders, Es\u2019hail 2 will provide television broadcasts, broadband connectivity and government services to Qatar and neighboring parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft also carries the first two amateur radio antennas to fly in geostationary orbit, linking hobbyists across a third of the Earth\u2019s surface in a single hop from as far west as Brazil and as far east as India.<\/p>\n

In a statement earlier this year, Es\u2019hailSat said the new satellite features \u201csophisticated anti-jamming capabilities\u201d to curb interference and will significantly expand the company\u2019s offerings currently provided by Es\u2019hail 1, which launched in 2013 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.<\/p>\n

The launch Thursday will mark the 63rd flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and the 18th SpaceX mission of the year.<\/p>\n

It will also end a run of night launches at Cape Canaveral stretching back to May 11, when a Falcon 9 rocket last flew from pad 39A. A series of launches from Cape Canaveral by SpaceX and United Launch Alliance over the summer and fall have all occurred during nighttime.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A plume of exhaust erupts from the flame trench at pad 39A during a hold-down firing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday night. Credit: William Harwood\/CBS News SpaceX test-fired a Falcon 9 rocket Monday night at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, clearing the way for a launch Thursday with Qatar\u2019s Es\u2019hail 2 communications […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2412,291,2824,2825,479,377,428,25],"class_list":["post-13517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amateur-radio","tag-commercial-space","tag-eshail-2","tag-eshailsat","tag-falcon-9","tag-japan","tag-kennedy-space-center","tag-launch"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}