60 years after Explorer 1, SpaceX delivers GovSat-1 to orbit

SpaceX delivered a European communications satellite to orbit Wednesday afternoon, 60 years after the United States achieved its first successful satellite launch just down the Cape Canaveral coast.

Firing nine Merlin engines with up to 1.7 million pounds of thrust, a Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a mission last year set sail for the second time at 4:25 p.m., lifting off from Launch Complex 40.

Stained with soot from its first mission, the rocket rumbled into clear, blue sky, leaving behind a spiraling white trail of exhaust as it climbed through the period of peak aerodynamic pressure.

About 32 minutes later, the rocket’s upper-stage completed its second engine burn and deployed GovSat-1, the first mission for a joint venture formed by the government of Luxembourg and SES, a Luxembourg-headquartered satellite operator.

[Launch schedule: Upcoming Florida rocket launches and landings]

[SpaceX targeting next month for Falcon Heavy launch from KSC]

Luxembourg's prime minister and defense minister, as well as the nation's grand duke and grand duchess, were at the Cape to watch the launch, which followed a scrub Tuesday to replace a faulty rocket sensor.

“It’s an important day for my country,” Xavier Bettel, the prime minister, said before the first launch attempt.

From an orbit high over the equator, the satellite built by Orbital ATK is designed to provide communications services for military and government users from European Union and NATO member states.

More:'Bringing Columbia Home': Launch director's book tells shuttle's final story

The launch came on the 60th anniversary of a Juno I rocket’s launch of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite to reach orbit after Russia’s launches of two Sputnik satellites sparked the Space Race.

NASA and the Air Force marked the occasion Wednesday afternoon with a ceremony and historic marker at the Air Force Space and Missile Museum near the launch site.

A frenzy of attention now will turn to SpaceX’s potential launch next week of the new Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

The heavy-lift rocket featuring a first stage of three nine-engine boosters — and carrying a Tesla Roadster sports car as a demonstration payload — could blast off as soon as Tuesday.

Producing more than 5 million pounds of thrust, the rocket would become the most powerful rocket available today.  

SpaceX will attempt to land the Heavy’s two side boosters back at Cape Canaveral, and the middle one on a ship at sea.

In what is now an unusual circumstance for SpaceX, Wednesday's launch of GovSat-1 did not try to land the first stage. The rocket was a version that SpaceX only intended to fly twice, which it did with two flights nine months apart.

An upgraded Falcon booster being introduced later this year is said to be capable of 10 or more flights.

“It’s weirder to consider that we’re not actually recovering this one,” SpaceX engineer Michael Hammersley said during the company's launch broadcast. “The goal is for each first stage to last tens of launches in the short-term, and hundreds or thousands of launches in the long-term.”

Instead, Wednesday’s mission featured an Atlantic Ocean “splashdown” by the twice-flown booster, which fired engines and deployed legs as if setting up for a landing but had no ship to touch down on.

But surprisingly, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said, the booster survived its controlled descent into the water, and it might be towed back to shore.

"This rocket was meant to test very high retrothrust landing in water so it didn’t hurt the droneship, but amazingly it has survived," Musk said on Twitter. 

The launch was the first of what could be four within the next four weeks from the Eastern Range. After the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX plans another Falcon 9 launch of a communications satellite, and United Launch Alliance is preparing an Atlas V rocket for a March 1 flight with a new NOAA weather satellite.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SpaceTeamGo.