{"id":77162,"date":"2018-03-25T18:03:10","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T01:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/flight-proven-falcon-9-completes-static-fire-test-for-5th-iridium-next-mission"},"modified":"2018-03-25T18:03:10","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T01:03:10","slug":"flight-proven-falcon-9-completes-static-fire-test-for-5th-iridium-next-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/flight-proven-falcon-9-completes-static-fire-test-for-5th-iridium-next-mission","title":{"rendered":"Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Completes Static Fire Test for 5th Iridium-NEXT Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/flight-proven-falcon-9-completes-static-fire-test-for-5th-iridium-next-mission2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A previously-used Falcon 9 booster soared to life at California\u2019s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Sunday for its Static Fire test ahead of lifting the fifth set of Iridium-NEXT communications satellites on Thursday, marking the start of a string of Falcon 9 missions lined up for March and April. Liftoff is targeting 14:19 UTC on March 29 to boost the number of Iridium-NEXT satellites in orbit to 50 as the Virginia-based communications company continues pushing toward having the full Iridium-NEXT constellation in operation by the end of summer.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s Static Fire test occurred near the opening of the day\u2019s test window at 7 a.m. and was expected to run for seven seconds to exercise the nine previously-flown Merlin 1D engines of Booster 1041, gearing up for its second Low Earth Orbit mission. The booster was first in action for the <a href=\"http:\/\/spaceflight101.com\/falcon-9-iridium-next-flight-3\/\">third Iridium-NEXT<\/a> mission in October 2017 and successfully returned via a Drone Ship landing in the Pacific Ocean as SpaceX has yet to conduct its first return-to-launch-site recovery from Vandenberg.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/spaceflight101.com\/falcon-9-iridium-next-flight-5\/flight-proven-falcon-9-completes-static-fire-test-for-5th-iridium-next-mission\/\">http:\/\/spaceflight101.com\/falcon-9-iridium-next-flight-5\/fli...t-mission\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A previously-used Falcon 9 booster soared to life at California\u2019s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Sunday for its Static Fire test ahead of lifting the fifth set of Iridium-NEXT communications satellites on Thursday, marking the start of a string of Falcon 9 missions lined up for March and April. Liftoff is targeting 14:19 UTC on [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,1495,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-health","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}