SpaceX, the private company established by PayPal’s founder Elon Musk, has made history by successfully launching their Falcon 1 rocket and achieving orbit. Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit! The amazing thing about this is that it was only their fourth try. While many people see that as failure, most countries take many tries to get it right.
This launch comes after the failure of the Falcon 1 (Flight 3). During Flight 3, a problem occurred just after the first separation which prevented the second stage from occurring and from reaching orbit. According to their press release, “SpaceX was aware of and had allowed for a thrust transient, but did not expect it to last that long. As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission. The fix was also very simple, requiring one line of code to be changed.”
You can see the video of the launch here:
Congrats, again, to SpaceX!
