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After its top executives hinted that their company would aim at launching an unprecedented 100 missions this year, SpaceX shared some remarkable footage from its latest launch of two satellites early in the evening yesterday. SpaceX launched two satellites for the European telecommunications services provider SES S.A. late last week, with the mission targeting a significantly higher altitude than the company's own Starlink satellites. The launch was SpaceX's second launch in less than five hours. It placed the two spacecraft on a trajectory for a geosynchronous transfer orbit, which is further up than the low Earth orbit (LEO) typically used by the Starlink spacecraft.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 Second Stage Footage Shows Earth In The Background

SpaceX's two satellite launch for SES saw the company use its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket to successfully conduct its 19th mission this year and its ninth overall launch for SES. The launch also provided spectacular visuals, with the Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1D engines blackening out the evening sky in Florida as they lit up to lift the rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Florida at 7:38 pm local time.

The Falcon 9's liftoff was accompanied by rare visuals of the rocket's first and second stages separating from a ground tracking camera. SpaceX's feed generally shifts to the inside of the first stage at the time of stage separation. Still, this time, the camera also tracked the two stages separating from each other and the fairing separation on the second stage. Similar views from a Falcon 9 launch of the COSMO-SkyMed earth observation satellite for the Italian Space Agency were shared during its launch early last year, and back then, the Falcon 9's first and second stages were visible as they raced away from each other after a brief pause as the first stage's engines shut off and the second stage's Merlin engine lit up.

2 of 9

However, SpaceX wasn't done with the SES launch, as a couple of days after launching the satellites, it shared new footage from the second stage. This short video clip showed the rocket continuing its journey after deploying the SES spacecraft at quite an altitude above the Earth. The satellites had separated from it at an approximate altitude of 1,400 kilometers, and SpaceX's tracker during the mission live stream had shown a path that would have let the second stage go further up from the Earth's surface.

The second stage is the only part of Falcon 9 that is not reusable. SpaceX has to build a new one for each launch, with these costs contributing significantly to the launch of each Falcon 9 mission. To solve this, the firm intends to make its entire Starship rocket fully reusable, which will be the first time any astronautics and rocket industry player has done so. SpaceX is currently testing the Starship rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, and it might soon conduct the massive rocket's first orbital test flight.

You can take a look at the video SpaceX shared below:

View from the second stage following last week's launch of SES-18 and SES-19 to a geosynchronous transfer orbit pic.twitter.com/GbSbq6ob2m

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 20, 2023