SpaceX has successfully launched two Falcon 9 rockets carrying satellite payloads after previous attempts were aborted less than a minute before liftoff in Florida and California the previous day.
In both cases, the rockets and payloads were in excellent condition.
On Wednesday, a private company launched two reconnaissance satellites, Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics (TRACER), for NASA at 2:13 p.m. PDT from Vandenberg Space Base in California. The mission was called off just 45 seconds before liftoff on Tuesday because of airspace issues in the Santa Barbara area, between San Francisco and Los Angeles, caused by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
SpaceX launched two O3b mPOWER satellites for Luxembourg-based SES from the space station's pad 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Tuesday at 5:12 p.m. ET after the mission was aborted 11 seconds before liftoff.
Vandenberg
The “airspace issues” were caused by a power failure at the Federal Aviation Administration's mission control center.
“A regional power outage in the Santa Barbara area disrupted the Los Angeles Air Traffic Control Telecommunications Center, which monitors air traffic over the Pacific Ocean,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement to SpaceFlight Now. “As a result, the FAA has postponed the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 TRACERS rocket that was scheduled for Tuesday, July 22. The FAA took this action to ensure the safety of the traveling public.”
The two TRACER satellites were placed close together to “study magnetic reconnection and its effects on Earth's atmosphere.” They were launched into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 367 miles.
Other payloads included the Athena EPIC, a multilingual experimental terminal, and a relativistic electron atmospheric loss.
The REAL mission will study high-energy particles in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts, scattered throughout the atmosphere.
Less than eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's first stage landed at SpaceX's Landing Zone 4 in the Pacific Ocean.
Cape Canaveral
The reason for the late cancellation was not specified.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the booster landed on the unmanned Just Read the Instructions ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The same first-stage booster previously launched the final two satellites for SES in December 2024. It also launched NASA Crew-10 and two Statlink missions.
SpaceX previously launched eight of the company's satellites into medium-Earth orbit, located at an altitude of about 8,000 kilometers above the Earth.
This was the 15th SES mission for SpaceX, the first of which took place in 2013.
Two mPOWER satellites were delivered to Florida by Boeing earlier this month.
“This next-generation satellite network was created to provide connectivity for the ‘other three billion’ – those without reliable, consistent access to communications systems,” SES says on its website. “For the first time, telcos are connecting entire island nations, remote industrial sites are gaining access to digital technology, and governments are conducting vital operations in the most challenging environments.”
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