Early on Thursday, SpaceX put a telecom satellite into orbit and made a rocket landing on a ship at sea (Nov. 3). At 1:22 a.m. EDT on Thursday, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Eutelsat's Hotbird 13G satellite launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (0522 GMT).

Less than nine minutes later, the first stage of the Falcon 9 made its way back to Earth. It successfully landed on SpaceX's Just Read the Instructions droneship, which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was this first stage's ninth launch and landing overall. SpaceX stated in a prelaunch mission description that the Falcon 9 first stage rocket powering this mission has previously launched the CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, and one Starlink mission (opens in new tab). (CRS-22 and CRS-25 were unmanned cargo flights to the orbiting lab, but CRS-3 and Crew-4 were astronaut missions to the International Space Station.)

While this was going on, Hotbird 13G continued to soar atop the Falcon 9's upper stage, which successfully placed the satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit 36 minutes after takeoff.

Airbus Defense and Space constructed Hotbird 13G, which will be run by France-based telecom provider Eutelsat. Eventually, the satellite will go to a geostationary orbit, which is located roughly 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometres) above our globe.

In that area of space, Hotbird 13G will join its twin, Hotbird 13F, which was launched on a Falcon 9 last month. The two spacecraft will assume a significant amount of duty by replacing three current Hotbird satellites.

More than 160 million TV homes in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East receive 1,000 television channels thanks to the Hotbird satellite family, according to a statement from Eutelsat. In a period of about two days, SpaceX launched the Hotbird 13G satellite twice from Florida's Space Coast. Elon Musk's business launched the USSF-44 mission for the United States on Tuesday, November 1. Kennedy Space Center of NASA's Space Force.

The most potent launcher currently in flight was used by USSF-44. It was the Falcon Heavy's fourth mission overall and its first since June 2019.