SpaceX achieves back-to-back successes for AsiaSat

Putting on a late summer sky show along Florida's Space Coast, a Falcon 9 rocket climbed into space after midnight Sunday with a commercial communications satellite to connect growing markets in China and Southeast Asia. The mission began at 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT) Sunday with the fiery ignition of the 224-foot-tall launcher's nine Merlin first stage engines. Once the kerosene-burning engines ramped up to full power, the Falcon 9 rocket soared away from Cape Canaveral atop a flickering pillar of red-hot exhaust, piercing through clouds before arcing east over the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket's booster stage gave way to a single-engine upper stage about three minutes after liftoff, beginning the first of a pair of burns to propel the nearly five-ton AsiaSat 6 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit, a waypoint on its way to a permanent operating post fixed 22,300 miles over the equator. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 8)