20081776 Club
Falcon 1 reaches orbit; SpaceX's last rocket becomes its first success
A hexagonal aluminum mass simulator called RatSat becomes the first payload a privately built liquid-fueled rocket ever carried into orbit.
Three Falcon 1 launches had already failed, and by September 2008 the fourth launch was the last attempt SpaceX could afford. On September 28, from Omelek Island in the Marshall Islands, Falcon 1 lifted off fifteen minutes into its launch window and, after a second-stage burn and restart, settled into a 621 by 643 kilometer orbit. Its cargo was RatSat, a 165-kilogram aluminum mass simulator built after Malaysia pulled its real satellite following the earlier failures. With that orbit, Falcon 1 became the first privately developed, fully liquid-fueled rocket ever to reach it…
