GPS 3 SV06 (Falcon 9) January 18, 2023

Created 20-Jan-23

Modified 13-Dec-23

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excerpts from spaceflightnow.com...

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket just after sunrise Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, hauling a GPS navigation satellite into orbit to replace an aging 16-year-old spacecraft in the global positioning network trusted to guide everything from military weapons to urban commuters.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:24 a.m. EST (1224 GMT) Wednesday, less than 10 minutes after sunrise on Florida’s Space Coast. The launcher climbed away from pad 40 with 1.7 million pounds of thrust from its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines, then headed northeast over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Falcon 9 surpassed the speed of sound in about a minute, then shut down its first stage around two-and-a-half minutes into the mission. The booster detached and descended to a propulsive landing about eight minutes after liftoff on a SpaceX drone ship floating in the Atlantic a few hundred miles east of Charleston, South Carolina.

The booster, known as B1077, completed its second flight to space, following a launch Oct. 5 with a crew of four heading for the International Space Station.

The Falcon’s first stage will return to Cape Canaveral on the drone ship for refurbishment and reuse on a future mission.

Full story here.