spacetoday.net: Falcon 9 launches radar, broadband satellites

Posted: Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 3:39 PM ET (2039 GMT)
Falcon 9 launch of Paz, Feb 2018 (SpaceX)

SpaceX launched a Spanish radar satellite and two broadband demonstration satellites early Thursday. The Falcon 9 lifted off on schedule at 9:17 a.m. Eastern from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and placed the Paz radar satellite into orbit. Paz, built by Airbus for Spanish company Hisdesat, was originally supposed to launch on a Dnepr but switched to SpaceX in 2017 after three years of delays. The Falcon 9 also placed into orbit the first two demonstration satellites for SpaceX's proposed Starlink constellation, named Tintin A and B. SpaceX attempted to catch at least one half of the payload fairing from the rocket using a ship equipped with a large net, but the fairing section missed the ship by a few hundred meters. Elon Musk later tweeted that a slightly larger parachute in the fairing should slow it down enough to enable a landing.