SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket of 2025 tonight, in what needs to be one other busy 12 months for the corporate.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off on Friday (Jan. 3) at 8:27 p.m. EST (0127 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, launching the Thuraya 4 spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit.
Thuraya 4 is operated by Space42, a satellite tv for pc and area providers firm primarily based within the United Arab Emirates. The satellite tv for pc will present cell communications providers all through Europe, the Middle East and Africa for each business and authorities prospects.
Eight minutes and 40 seconds after taking off, the Falcon 9 booster returned to Earth for a touchdown aboard SpaceX’s droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” offshore close by within the Atlantic Ocean.
This was the twentieth flight and restoration for this Falcon 9 first stage booster, and SpaceX’s 341st restoration of an orbital-class rocket, together with each Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship pic.twitter.com/DeNJcdfH6tJanuary 4, 2025
The first stage booster that launched at this time’s mission beforehand launched the ill-fated ispace Haukto-R moon lander to the lunar floor, an ISS resupply mission in addition to 13 batches of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
Roughly 35 minutes and 30 seconds into the flight, the Thuraya 4 satellite tv for pc separated from the rocket’s second stage and deployed into geostationary switch orbit, the place it can then start elevating as much as geosynchronous orbit above a set spot on Earth.
The Thuraya 4 mission marks SpaceX’s 418th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and the corporate’s 435th mission total. SpaceX launched greater than 130 orbital missions in 2024, and this 12 months’s complete is predicted to be even greater.
The satellite tv for pc on at this time’s flight is understood extra formally because the Thuraya 4-NGS (Next Generation System) and was constructed by Airbus. The applied sciences aboard the satellite tv for pc will “unlock progressive AI-powered providers,” Ali Al Hashemi, CEO of Yahsat Space Services, one of many two firms that kind Space42, mentioned in a press release.
