Stay tuned, SiriusXM radio listeners, your program is getting a sign increase.
SpaceX launched the SXM-9 satellite tv for pc Thursday morning (Dec. 5), for SiriusXM satellite tv for pc radio. The payload is the tenth spacecraft launched for SiriusXM, and the third of the corporate’s satellites to experience a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to orbit.
Liftoff occurred at the start of the SXM-9 mission’s 90-minute launch window, taking off from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A), at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida, at 11:12 a.m. ET (1612 GMT).
Falcon 9’s first stage booster returned a number of miles off Florida’s Space Coast, touchdown on SpaceX’s Just Read the Instructions drone ship within the Atlantic Ocean roughly 8.5 minutes after liftoff. “There you’ve gotten it!” a SpaceX spokesperson declared throughout the mission’s livestream because the booster touched down on the floating drone ship. “That touchdown marks SpaceX’s one hundred and eightieth profitable restoration of an orbital class rocket, together with the primary stage landings for each Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy,” he stated, indicating that this was additionally the a hundredth touchdown for Just Read the Instructions.
This was the nineteenth flight for this explicit booster, shortening the hole between it and SpaceX’s most flown booster, which at the moment holds the document at 24 flights. This booster’s earlier flights embrace 10 Starlink launches, in addition to the CRS-26 cargo mission to the ISS, OneWeb Launch 16, Instelsat IS-40e, O3B mPOWER, Ovzon 3, Eutelsat 36D, Turksat 6A and Maxar 2, in line with SpaceX.
After separating from its booster, Falcon 9’s higher stage carried the satellite tv for pc right into a geosynchronous switch orbit, the place it was launched from the rocket about 34.5 minutes after liftoff to fly to its closing orbital place underneath its personal energy.
SXM-9 measures 27 toes (8 meters) tall, and stretches to 100 toes (30 meters) lengthy with its two photo voltaic panel arrays unfolded. The satellite tv for pc was designed and manufactured by Maxar Technologies, and primarily based on Maxar’s SSL-1300 satellite tv for pc bus. The final SiriusXM satellite tv for pc mission occurred in 2021, launching SXM-8. That satellite tv for pc, and its predecessor SXM-7, which launched the earlier 12 months in 2020, had been each meant to switch a pair of growing old Sirius satellites, XM-3 and XM-4.
SXM-7, nonetheless, was declared misplaced in orbit a couple of month after launching, prolonging the anticipated use for the growing old satellites, which each launched in 2005.
Though the satellite tv for pc radio firm’s service to its prospects was unaffected by the lack of SXM-7, and XM-3 and XM-4 have continued to function nominally, the addition of SXM-9 stands so as to add some robustness to the high-powered radio satellite tv for pc community.
Editor’s be aware: This story was up to date at 11:50 a.m. ET on Dec. 5 with the information that this launch despatched the SiriusXM-9 satellite tv for pc to orbit.
