Spacex successfully brought the American telecommunications satellite SXM-8 into orbit. This is reported by TASS.
Falcon 9 launch vehicle started from a cosmodrome at Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida at 00:28 in the time of the east coast of the United States. The satellite was delivered to a subsynchronous geopheffer orbit. After a few minutes, the reusable first stage of the rocket, which has a code designation B1061-3, automatically landed on the Floating Platform Just Read The Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is the third flight B1061-3, notes the site nasaspaceflightNow.com. In November 2020, it was used when started at the Crew Dragon’s ISS with astronauts on board. Its second flight passed only 44 days ago to deliver four more astronauts in April 2021.
SXM-8 satellite was built by Maxar Technologies. Its starting mass is seven tons, the planned work time is 15 years. He and the similar satellite SXM-7 were built by Maxar Technologies to replace outdated XM-3 and XM-4 satellites used by the American satellite SIRIUSXM satellite radio station.
SXM-7 was led into orbit in December 2020, but failed in just six weeks. An estimated cause of a malfunction was a software error.