by kantos

At 1:26am ET, SpaceX launched their Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral and, once again, recovered the first stage of that rocket on a drone ship floating in the ocean. More importantly, SpaceX successfully completed the primary mission of today’s launch by inserting their payload, the JCSAT-16 satellite, into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).

Tonight’s booster was brought back to a drone ship because their payload needed to be deployed at an incredibly high altitude in GTO. To date, the only time SpaceX has made a rocket recovery attempt back on land has been on missions to the much closer altitude of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The successfully deployed payload is known as JCSAT-16 and is a commercial communications satellite developed by Space Systems Loral for the SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. It will become part of a 16-satellite constellation used to provide data-transfer communications and video distribution in the Asia-Pacific region.

Also, here's a couple shots I got on my phone of lift off. Mind you it's 1:26 AM, the sky lights up with every rocket.