After several delays due to adverse weather conditions, SpaceX successfully launched the ViaSat-3 broadband satellite on a Falcon Heavy rocket on Sunday.
The Falcon Heavy lifted off at 8:26 p.m. EDT from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida toward Geostationary Orbit (GEO). It was the rocket’s sixth flight since 2018.
After being pushed up by the massive power of 27 Merlin engines, the rocket flipped onto the eastern path, seen by tourists and natives alike.
The space company usually collects first-stage boosters to use again, but this time, all available propellant was needed Sunday to get the 13,000-pound ViaSat-3 satellite into its target orbit.
Eventually, the three stages separated and fell into the ocean more than 50 miles below after lifting the rocket from Earth’s lower atmosphere.
On Thursday SpaceX launched 46 of its own low-altitude satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California
Then on Friday, it launched two medium-altitude broadband satellites for Luxembourg’s SES from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The launches underscore the ongoing space race to deploy space-based Internet satellites to provide broad access to customers around the world.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are a series of low-altitude satellites that provide high-speed, low-latency internet to users around the world. A large number of Starlink satellites are required to provide uninterrupted service to users.
User inputs are received by satellites and then sent to nearby Starlinks for transmission to gateway ground stations connected to high-speed data lines.
The responses are then passed back to the user.
There is another approach for ViaSat, which is placed in 22,300-mile-high orbits above the equator, where they rotate in close step. Below the satellite, the planet appears to be motionless.
The satellites have powerful solar panels capable of generating 25 kilowatts of energy. If all goes according to plan, the satellite will provide internet to its customers this summer.
Two more satellites for similar purposes, but aimed at Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, are likely to be sent into space after the next two years.
Ryan continued that Another advantage of geosynchronous orbit is that you can see a third of the Earth with one satellite. So with one launch, one satellite, you can potentially connect to a third of the Earth And that’s the principle behind ViaSat-3.
David Ryan, president of space and commercial networks at ViaSat, told CBS News If you’re a provider in low Earth orbit, by definition, to stay up in orbit, you’re going to be screaming at the sky. So your terminal on the ground has to be more complex and more expensive.
