November 22 at 9:52 pm E.T. from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
To start the Thanksgiving week off SpaceX has just launched another bird, the Falcon 9. B1049 has made its eleventh and final flight for the company as it was expended during the Eutelsat 10b mission tonight. The all new all electric satellite built on the Spacebus NEO platform will be located at 10 degrees East, which is an orbital position that offers a unique visibility spanning the Americas to Asia.
EUTELSAT 10B will also carry two new multi-beam HTS Ku-band payloads. A high capacity payload which will cover the North Atlantic corridor, Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the Middle East. It will offer significant throughput in the busiest air and sea traffic zones along with a second payload to extend coverage across the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the Indian Ocean. Both satellites HTS payload will be able to process more that 50 GHz or bandwidth, offering a throughput of about 35 Gbps. These will also carry Widebeam C, and Ku-band payloads to ensure service continuity for existing customers on the EUTELSAT 10A satellite.
Tonight’s Falcon 9, B1049 is one of the oldest, most used in the SpaceX launching fleet and unfortunately will meet the same end as B1051 and be expended by crashing into the Atlantic Ocean to close out the mission. Currently she has flown ten missions, and has not been used since September of last year, during the Starlink 2-1 mission from Vandenberg California. Currently she also is one of the few boosters to have flown from all three SpaceX operated launch complexes. 39A, and 40 in Cape Canaveral, and 4E in Vandenberg. B1049’s first flight was back in September of 2018.
The forecast at daybreak read that chances of acceptable lift off conditions were 10% with rainstorms and heavy cloud coverage expected throughout the day and night. Conditions never appeared to improve as the day went on, CRS-26 was scrubbed due to the foul weather as it was to lift off earlier in the day. Yet once again SpaceX found the window, they needed to get that bird off the ground. B1049 flew flawlessly one last time dodging storm cells on her way to bring Eutelsat 10B to orbit. Roughly nine minutes after her flight began, she crashed into the Atlantic, joining B1051 who was also expended earlier this month.
Next Horizons Spaceflight 