SpaceX launches Israeli reconnaissance satellite, lands rocket in final flight of 2022 - Space.com

SpaceX rang retired 2022 a fewer days aboriginal with a superb nighttime motorboat from California to haul an Israeli reconnaissance outer into orbit. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Israeli Earth-imaging outer EROS C-3 into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base successful California precocious Thursday nighttime (Dec. 29), releasing the payload into orbit astir 15 minutes aft leaving Earth. Liftoff occurred astatine 11:38 p.m. PST astatine the motorboat tract (2:38 a.m. EST/0738 GMT), with the Falcon 9's archetypal signifier returning to onshore astatine a adjacent SpaceX pad astir 8 minutes into the flight.

"This is our 61st and last SpaceX motorboat of 2022," Jesse Anderson, SpaceX's accumulation and engineering manager, said during a unrecorded webcast. 

EROS C-3, abbreviated for Earth Resources Observation Satellite C3, is an Earth reflection outer built to alteration "defense and quality organizations to behaviour operations nether implicit confidentiality and information protection," according to its Israel-based shaper ImageSat International (opens successful caller tab). It outgo astir $186 million, according to Spaceflight Now (opens successful caller tab).

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The first-ever EROS satellite, EROS A, was launched successful 2000 and reentered Earth's ambiance successful 2006. Little accusation is disposable astir the progressive members of the fleet (EROS-B, EROS-C1 and EROS C2), presumably owed to information concerns.

EROS-C3 has a solution of astir 1 ft (30 centimeters) for greyscale images and 2 feet (60 cm) for multispectral imagery, according to Everyday Astronaut.  By the extremity of the decade, it volition signifier portion of a quartet of EROS satellites that volition enactment alongside 2 synthetic aperture radar satellites.

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SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched retrograde to (against) the Earth's rotation and to deploy EROS-C3 successful debased Earth orbit. The archetypal signifier past executed 3 burns (a boost backmost maneuver, introduction pain and landing burn) to interaction down connected onshore astatine SpaceX's Landing Zone 4 astatine Vandenberg.

This was the 11th formation for the Falcon 9 rocket's archetypal stage. It antecedently flew 2 astronaut flights for NASA, 2 Starlink net satellite missions and six assorted uncrewed commercialized and NASA missions. Its palmy landing marked the 160th landing of a SpaceX's orbital rocket, including some Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. 

The EROS C-3 motorboat besides marked SpaceX's 2nd motorboat successful arsenic galore days. On Wednesday (Dec. 28), the institution launched its archetypal Gen2 Starlink net satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base successful Florida, delivering 54 of the next-generation Starlinks into orbit. 

CORRECTION: An earlier mentation of this communicative incorrectly stated the SpaceX Falcon 9 archetypal signifier booster would onshore connected a drone vessel successful the Pacific Ocean. It launched from and landed astatine Vandenberg Space Force Base successful California. 

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller (opens successful caller tab)?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a publication astir abstraction medicine. Follow her connected Twitter @howellspace (opens successful caller tab). Follow america connected Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens successful caller tab) or Facebook (opens successful caller tab).