Insider Brief:
- The following is a summary previously reported on SatNews.
- SpaceX kicked off the 2024 launch year with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a telecom satellite for Swedish company, Ovzon, on January 3, at 6:04 PM EST from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
- This is the first privately funded and developed Swedish geostationary satellite.
SpaceX successfully launched Swedish broadband satellite, Ovzon 3, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on January 3. The Falcon 9 carrying the satellite took off at 6:04 p.m. EST with the first stage of the rocket returning to Earth as planned, marking its 10th successful launch and landing according to the SpaceX mission description. The satellite was deployed in geosynchronous transfer orbit about 38.5 minutes after launch.
The Ovzon 3 satellite, described as the first privately funded and developed Swedish geostationary satellite, is a communications satellite designed to improve mobile broadband coverage in underserved regions, using steerable spot beams to cover approximately one-third of the Earth.
This marks SpaceX’s second launch of 2024, following the deployment of 21 Starlink internet satellites the day before. SpaceX is aiming for a record-breaking 144 orbital missions in 2024, far surpassing the previous record of 96 set in 2023 including missions for the U.S. Space Force and Missile Defense Agency and NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, as reported by SpaceFlight Now.
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