PAYPAL founder Elon Musk’s civilian spaceflight company, , achieved its first commercial success this week after its homegrown Falcon 1 rocket lofted a Malaysian Earth-imaging satellite into orbit.
As New ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´ went to press, the launch on Tuesday from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands appeared to have gone without a hitch, inserting the into a near-equatorial orbit at an altitude of 695 kilometres.
RazakSAT will fly over Malaysia 12 times a day, helping the nation’s scientists better manage its forests, farmland and marine resources.
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The launch for its first paying customer is a major fillip for SpaceX: until now its Falcon 1 rocket had only lofted a dummy payload.
The firm has already won a contract from NASA to haul cargo to the International Space Station. But it will use a much larger rocket for these launches: the Falcon 9 will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying cargo in a capsule called the Dragon.