SpaceX has been successful on its fourth launch attempt of the Falcon 1 rocket from the central Pacific."With this key milestone, Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth," read a company statement.
"This is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of an enormous amount of work by a great team," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, who made his fortune as an Internet entrepreneur. "The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion -middle of the bull's-eye - and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake."
Designed from the ground up by SpaceX, the Falcon I lifted off at 7:15 p.m. (EDT ) from Omelek Island at the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Preliminary data indicates that Falcon 1 achieved an elliptical orbit of 500 km by 700 km, 9.2 degrees inclination, exactly as targeted.
Falcon 1 carried a 364-pound payload mass simulator designed and built by SpaceX. The payload remains attached to the second stage as it orbits Earth.
This was the second flight for the new SpaceX-developed Merlin 1C regeneratively-cooled engine. A "hold before liftoff" system was used to enhance reliability by permitting all launch systems to be verified as functioning nominally before launch was initiated, according to a SpaceX Web site. A single SpaceX-developed Kestrel engine powered the Falcon 1 second stage.
For more information on SpaceX or to watch video of the launch, visit www.spacex.com
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