Amazing Video Replay Captures Landing of Falcon 9 back in Florida
On Sunday evening, SpaceX successfully launched yet another of its Falcon 9 rockets. But perhaps more spectacular than seeing the launch, is watching the video replay of the return and landing of the Falcon 9 rocket booster.
Unlike most of the launches in which the Falcon 9 lands on a drone ship in the ocean, yesterday’s landing took place back on solid ground at Florida’s space coast.
The spectacle of launch and landing happen in just the first 8 minutes of the mission. As you can see in the video replay of Falcon 9 launch & landing and deployment of a SAOCOM 1B satellite below.
With so many camera angles, each SpaceX launch is spectacular to watch both in person and online. In this video, at the 8-minute mark, SpaceX’s cameras provide an incredible split-screen view of the rocket booster as it descends and lands at the space center landing pad.
The satellite deployment is much earlier on this flight than usual, occurring just 14 minutes after launch.
credit: SpaceX
Another very unusual aspect of yesterday’s launch is the initial launch and subsequent orbital flight path of the spacecraft.
Typically, rockets launching from the Kennedy Space Center head out east over the Atlantic for a standard west-to-east orbit around the earth, or sometimes departing to the north-east along the east coast of the United States for an orbit that syncs up with the International Space Station (ISS).
But Sunday’s launch of Falcon 9 and SAOCOM 1B headed south-west across the southern part of Florida, then over Cuba, and Central America eventually entering and releasing its payload into a polar orbit.
The SAOCOM 1B is the second of a pair of satellites which will monitor and report on soil moisture content and other data for scientists.
Launch Video Replay of SpaceX Falcon 9 SAOCOM 1B Mission
About an hour into its flight, the spacecraft also deployed two other satellites, GNOMES-1 and Tyvak-0172, as rideshare payloads. There had been another Falcon 9 launch scheduled for Sunday morning. As of this writing, because of weather delays, that flight has been rescheduled for Thursday 8:26am Eastern time.
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