Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Watch SpaceX blast a 5-tonne Intelsat satellite to orbit

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

SpaceX successfully launched a 5-metric-ton Intelsat communications satellite to orbit on Thursday, August 3.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellite blasted off from the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1 a.m. (10 p.m. Wednesday).

Recommended Videos

The mission marked the sixth flight for the first-stage Falcon 9 booster, which previously launched Crew-5, GPS III-6, Inmarsat I6-F2, CRS-28, and one Starlink mission.

As usual, SpaceX used multiple cameras to live stream the key parts of the flight, including the launch, booster landing, and satellite deployment.

SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket lit up the Florida sky as it left the launchpad in the early hours of Thursday local time.

Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/GVP7zobtv3

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 3, 2023

Around eight minutes after launch, and having done its job, the first stage descended to a droneship waiting in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Florida. The clip below shows the vehicle’s landing legs deploying just prior to reaching the droneship. The booster performed a perfect touchdown, enabling it to be used for another mission once it’s been cleaned up and refurbished. The landing marked SpaceX’s 213th landing of an orbital-class rocket.

Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/miU7GVqx3q

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 3, 2023

Around 33 minutes after launch, the satellite successfully deployed.

Deployment of @Intelsat Galaxy 37/Horizons 4 confirmed pic.twitter.com/zUnEa6V4WW

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 3, 2023

SpaceX also shared a set of dramatic images showing the start of the mission.

Falcon 9 launches the @Intelsat G-37 mission to orbit from Florida pic.twitter.com/3iayvTMSge

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 3, 2023

The launch of the Maxar-built Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 satellite will provide North American capacity for television media and telecommunication network customers, Intelsat said.

The original plan was to deploy the satellite using an Arianespace Ariane 6 rocket, but continuing delays in the rocket’s production prompted Intelsat to switch to SpaceX to get the job done.

Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Topics
NASA built the Roman Space Telescope to study dark matter, but it can also help protect Earth from killer asteroids
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope wasn't built to hunt asteroids, but it turns out to be great at it.
Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

NASA is about to launch a telescope built to unlock some of the universe's biggest mysteries, and it turns out that same design could help protect Earth along the way.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on August 30, 2026, with a primary mission focused on studying dark matter and dark energy - the invisible forces shaping galaxies and cosmic expansion. Researchers now say its unique design also makes it unexpectedly effective at spotting dangerous asteroids headed our way (via MIT Technology Review).

Read more
Space is becoming Bezos and Musk’s next data center site, and we have every reason to worry
The AI boom is coming for the night sky
How Vast's space station will look in orbit.

AI data centers already consume vast amounts of electricity and water on Earth, so Silicon Valley has begun looking somewhere considerably more spacious... literally.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, along with several other companies, have proposed enormous constellations of satellites designed to operate as orbital data centers. However, environmental groups and former space officials are now warning that putting them into orbit at the proposed scale could have severe consequences for Earth's atmosphere and the night sky.

Read more
The first possible exomoon is here, and it makes our Moon look hilariously tiny
Scientists may have found the first exomoon, except this one is the size of Jupiter
This artist’s concept depicts a potential volcanic moon between the exoplanet WASP-49 b, left, and its parent star. New evidence indicating that a massive sodium cloud observed near WASP-49 b is produced by neither the planet nor the star has prompted researchers to ask if its origin could be an exomoon.

We have already discovered more than 6,000 planets outside of our immediate neighborhood. Yet, finding a moon orbiting one of those distant worlds has proved considerably harder. Astronomers may finally have something close to the real deal, but this particular object stretches the word “moon” almost beyond recognition.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, researchers detected strong evidence for a moon-like object in the CD-35 2722 system. Further observations are still necessary to confirm the discovery, but it could become the first confidently detected natural satellite outside our solar system. There is still one tiny complication though. This moon is apparently massive.

Read more