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After a very busy 2020, which saw him make a number of achievements, including the launch of the first space astronauts on American soil in 2011, SpaceX on Thursday completed the first rocket launch in 2021.
The company led by Elon Musk sent a communications satellite to Turkey in orbit through the Falcon 9 missile, departing from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 21:15 EST.
Shortly afterwards, SpaceX confirmed that it had successfully launched the Turksat 5A satellite, which it is said to have used to increase Turkey’s presence in space.
SPACEX LAUNCHES SIRIUSXM SATELLITE FROM CAPA CANAVERAL
Later this year, SpaceX will also send the Turksat 5B satellite into space, according to Space.com.
SpaceX, which helped Musk become the richest person in the world, also managed to successfully land the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on the Just Read The Instructions drone floating in the Atlantic Ocean. This is the fourth release for this first stage. It had previously been used to send a GPS satellite to the US Space Force and the growing Starlink Internet business, once in September and then again in October.
SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, also plans to recover both sides of its nose cone.
SPACEX STARSHIP TEST FLIGHT ENDS IN MASSY FIRE BALL, BUT MUSK SAYS IT WAS ANOTHER SUCCESS
SpaceX is expected to have a busy calendar in 2021, including testing its prototype Starship SN9, which could come as early as this weekend.
The aerospace company on Wednesday conducted a static fire test Triple Raptor of the new generation space flight system at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas, which briefly showed that the three engines of the test vehicle are igniting.
Starship is a completely reusable transport system designed to transport both the crew and the cargo in the orbit of Earth, the moon, Mars and more. Starship is expected to be the most powerful launch vehicle in the world ever developed, with the capacity to carry over 100 metric tons into Earth’s orbit.
According to Spaceflightnow.com, SpaceX will launch more than 40 rockets this year, some of them coming out of Florida and the rest from California.
The company’s next mission will be a Transporter-1 mission, scheduled to take place on January 14 in Cape Canaveral.
Originally set for December 16, this launch will see SpaceX send Falcon 9 to carry “dozens of small microsatellites and nanosatellites for commercial and government customers,” Spaceflightnow noted.
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Lucas Manfredi of FOX Business contributed to this story.
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