Lighting up the night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket making the program's 50th flight thundered away from Cape Canaveral early Tuesday, shattering the overnight calm with a crackling roar as it boosted a Spanish communications satellite toward orbit in the California rocket builder's fifth flight so far this year.

Running more than a week late because of testing and scheduling issues, the Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1D engines ignited and throttled up to liftoff thrust at 12:33 a.m. EST, pushing the booster away from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a brilliant plume of fire visible for miles around.

With the engines generating 1.7 million pounds of thrust, the slender 229-foot-tall rocket initially climbed straight up, then arced over to the east and shot away over the Atlantic Ocean, rapidly fading from view as it accelerated toward space.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to reflect:

Very proud of the SpaceX team! Can’t believe it’s been fifty Falcon 9 launches already. Just ten years ago, we couldn’t even reach orbit with little Falcon 1. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2018

The engines shut down and the first stage fell away about two-and-a-half minutes after launch and the flight continued on the power of the second stage's single Merlin engine. The first stage, meanwhile, fell back into the atmosphere but no attempt was made to recover the rocket.

That's because SpaceX's booster recovery ship remained in Port Canaveral due to rough seas, with waves topping 24 feet in the landing zone. While the first stage carried out a series of re-entry rocket firings just as it would for a droneship landing, the booster was not expected to survive impact in the ocean.

But getting the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite to orbit was the primary goal of the flight and the second stage did just that, reaching a preliminary parking orbit about eight minutes and 40 seconds after launch. A second firing was required to put Hispasat 30W-6 into the required highly elliptical "transfer" orbit.

An artist's impression of the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite with its antennas and solar panels deployed. Hispasat

The satellite will use its own propulsion system to circularize the orbit at an altitude of 22,000 miles above the equator. Satellites in such "geostationary" orbits take 24 hours to compete one trip around the planet and thus appear stationary in the sky -- a critical requirement for communications stations.

As its name implies, Hispasat 30W-6 eventually will be stationed above the equator east of Brazil at 30 degrees west longitude where it will replace an older satellite, Hispasat 1D, providing additional high-speed Ku-band coverage of the Andes region and Brazil, along with expanded service to the Americas and western Europe.

The satellite, built by Space Systems Loral, is equipped with 40 Ku-band transponders, seven Ka beams and 10 C-band transponders. Hispasat distributes Spanish and Portuguese content, including direct-to-home and high-definition television. The company also provides satellite broadband service and data for governments and corporate users.

With the Hispasat launch behind them, SpaceX engineers will press ahead with a busy Spring schedule, launching another Falcon 9 carrying 10 Iridium NEXT satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on March 29, followed four days later by launch of a Dragon cargo ship from Cape Canaveral to deliver supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

A Falcon 9 is slated to take off from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center as early as April 5 to boost the Bangabandhu 1 communications satellite into space for the government of Bangladesh followed by launch of NASA's exoplanet-hunting TESS spacecraft from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on April 16.

Another Iridium NEXT flight from Vandenberg is expected as early as April 28, followed two days later by launch of the SES-12 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral. An Indonesian relay station is expected to launch atop a Falcon 9 from Florida sometime in May, with another space station resupply mission expected to go up June 9.

If all goes well, SpaceX will launch its second Falcon Heavy rocket as early as June 13, using the world's most powerful booster to put more than 20 small satellites into orbit after launch from the Kennedy Space Center.</s>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40 with the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite on Tuesday, March 6, 2018.</s>(Craig Bailey/Florida Today via AP). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off early Tuesday, March 6, 2018, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The rocket is carrying the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite.

(Craig Bailey/Florida Today via AP). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off early Tuesday, March 6, 2018, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The rocket is carrying the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - SpaceX is marking the 50th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket, its satellite-delivery workhorse.

The latest Falcon took flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, early Tuesday, successfully hoisting a massive communications satellite for Spain's Hispasat corporation. The orbiting satellite is almost as big as a city bus.

No attempt was made to recover the first-stage booster. Waves offshore were too rough for a barge landing.

SpaceX has been flying the Falcon 9 since mid-2010. Fifty launches in less than eight years is a pretty good clip, by rocket standards.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk says via Twitter that he can't believe it's already been 50 launches and that just 10 years ago, the company couldn't even reach orbit with the little, original Falcon 1.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>The Hispasat 30W-6 satellite launched on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch was from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 6, 2018. (Source: SpaceX)

The rocket launched shortly after midnight from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The Falcon 9 Rocket carried a massive communications satellite that provides television, broadband and other services to North America, Europe and North Africa. The Hispasat 30W-6 satellite was delivered to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit approximately 33 minutes after launch. SpaceX did not attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage after launch due to unfavorable weather conditions in the recovery area off the Atlantic Coast.

This comes less than two weeks after SapceX's previous launch. The PAZ satellite went up aboard the Falcon 9 on Feb. 22. Read that story here.</s>SpaceX successfully launched a Spanish communications satellite early today (March 6) on the landmark 50th flight of the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

The two-stage Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) this morning, delivering the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite to Earth orbit about 30 minutes later.

SpaceX commonly lands Falcon 9 first stages during such missions, as part of the company's effort to develop fully and rapidly reusable launch systems. But there was no touchdown attempt this morning. [6 Fun Facts About SpaceX]

"SpaceX will not attempt to land Falcon 9's first stage after launch, due to unfavorable weather conditions in the recovery area off of Florida's Atlantic Coast," company representatives wrote before liftoff, in a description of the Hispasat 30W-6 mission.

As that note indicates, any landing attempt this morning would have taken place at sea, with the booster aiming for the deck of a robotic SpaceX "drone ship." That's the norm for SpaceX launches that involve particularly heavy payloads and those that send satellites to distant orbits; there's often not enough fuel left to get the booster all the way back to terra firma.

And Hispasat 30W-6 meets both of those criteria: It's big, and it's going far afield. If all goes according to plan, the satellite will settle into geostationary orbit, about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) above Earth.

"Falcon 9 flight 50 launches tonight, carrying Hispasat for Spain. At 6 metric tons and almost the size of a city bus, it will be the largest geostationary satellite we’ve ever flown," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter on Monday (March 5).

The first Falcon 9 rocket launched in June 2010, with two failures occuring over the rocket's nearly 8 years in operation. Those two failures occurred in June 2015, when a Falcon 9 broke apart during the launch of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule on a resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA; and in September 2016, when a rocket exploded on the launchpad during a routine preflight test.

The Madrid-based company Hispasat will use the newly launched satellite for a variety of purposes.

"Hispasat 30W-6 will provide Hispasat additional Ku and C band capacity in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas; reinforce the distribution of audiovisual content in Latin America; and provide connectivity in mobile environments," SpaceX representatives wrote in the mission description. "Utilizing the satellite's Ka band transponders, Hispasat 30W-6 will enable Hispasat to expand its broadband service offering in the European region and northwest Africa."

Hispasat 30W-6 was built by California company SSL (formerly Space Systems/Loral) and has a design lifetime of 15 years, SpaceX representatives added.

This morning's launch was originally scheduled to take place Feb. 25, but SpaceX delayed the liftoff to perform pressurization checks on the Falcon 9's payload fairing, the nose cone that protects a satellite during liftoff.

The company then had to wait until after the successful March 1 launch of the GOES-S weather satellite, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.</s>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space early Tuesday from Canaveral Air Force Station.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 12:33 a.m. from Launch Complex 40.

The rocket was carrying the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite, a commercial communications satellite. It will provide television, broadband, corporate networks and other telecommunications solutions.</s>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - SpaceX has been given the all-clear to proceed with an early Tuesday Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with a commercial communications satellite.

SpaceX's fifth mission of the year -- and second overall launch from the Space Coast in as many days – will target a 12:33 a.m. liftoff from Launch Complex 40. According to News 6 partner at Florida Today, teams have two hours to launch the satellite for Spain-based Hispasat.

Forecasters expect 90 percent "go" conditions for the liftoff, according to the Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron.

The satellite, known as Hispasat 30W-6, is a 12,000-pound spacecraft that will provide television, broadband and other communications services to the Americas and Europe. It was manufactured by Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California, before shipment to Cape Canaveral in January.

SpaceX will boost the heavy satellite to a geostationary transfer orbit, resulting in a limited leftover fuel supply for the Falcon 9 booster to attempt an automated landing. The Of Course I Still Love You drone ship is expected to host the attempt and return to Port Canaveral with the 162-foot-tall booster several days later.

Tuesday's launch attempt follows last Thursday's successful 5:02 p.m. blastoff of an Atlas V rocket with the newest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite, labeled GOES-S. The geostationary spacecraft should become fully operational before the end of the year.</s>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched shortly after midnight Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with Hispasat 30W-6, a communications satellite heading for a position more than 22,000 miles over the equator to serve markets in Europe, North Africa and the Americas.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket took off at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) Tuesday from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad and delivered its commercial telecom payload into a geostationary transfer orbit 33 minutes later.

Tuesday’s launch marked the 50th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and the fourth Falcon 9 flight of 2018. SpaceX has also logged one launch of the powerful triple-body Falcon Heavy rocket this year, bringing the company’s tally for 2018 to five missions.

Read our Mission Status Center for details on the flight.</s>A Spanish-owned, U.S.-built commercial communications satellite climbed into orbit early Tuesday from Cape Canaveral on the 50th flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launching on a 15-year mission to relay video, data and broadband signals across the Americas, Europe and North Africa.

Heading for a post in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator, the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite took off at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) Tuesday from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad.

A 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket, firing nine Merlin 1D main engines with 1.7 million pounds of ground-shaking thrust, cleared the seaside launch complex and arced to the east from Cape Canaveral, aligning on a heading to place its powerhouse payload into orbit.

The Falcon 9’s first stage switched off its main engines around two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, and the booster detached for a controlled descent into the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX’s rocket recovery ship was not in position in the downrange recovery zone because of rough seas, preventing the booster from making an intact landing for the company to reuse on a future flight.

A single Merlin engine on the Falcon 9’s upper stage ignited to head into orbit, and the rocket shed its nose cone around three-and-a-half minutes into the mission, once the fairing structure was no longer needed to protect the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite.

The upper stage engine accomplished a six-minute firing to reach a preliminary parking orbit, then the rocket coasted across the Atlantic before reigniting the engine over Africa for a planned 55-second burn to raise the orbit’s apogee, or high point, to an altitude near the Hispasat 30W-6 spacecraft’s final operating location nearly 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) above Earth.

An engineer on SpaceX’s launch team confirmed an on-target orbital insertion on the company’s commentary loop, and a live video feed from the rocket showed the Hispasat 30W-6 spacecraft deploying from the Falcon 9 upper stage after the vehicles flew into an orbital sunrise.

An official from Madrid-based Hispasat, the satellite’s owner, said ground controllers received initial telemetry signals from the spacecraft shortly after its release from the Falcon 9 rocket.

Built by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California, Hispasat 30W-6 is one of the heaviest geostationary communications satellites to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.

With a launch weight of more than 13,400 pounds — approximately 6.1 metric tons — Hispasat 30W-6 carries a tri-band communications payload with broad reach from the Americas and the Caribbean, to North Africa, to Europe and the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Spain and Portugal.

“This new satellite will allow us to meet the growing connectivity demand detected in the market,” said Carlos Espinós, CEO of Hispasat. “In the hyperconnected world in which we live, access to quality broadband is an essential need for economic, social and even personal development, and this satellite fulfils this need in places other technologies cannot reach. Hispasat 30W-6 allows us to broaden capacity and services, while completing the current phase of the company’s growth plan.”

Forty Ku-band transponders on Hispasat 30W-6 will focus on two coverage areas in Europe and North Africa, and in the Americas, stretching from Canada to Patagonia. Ten C-band transponders will support communications services in the southern United States, the Caribbean and South America.

Hispasat 30W-6 also adds Ka-band capacity to the company’s portfolio, carrying seven high-throughput beams covering Spain, Portugal, other regions in Europe, plus North Africa. The Ka-band payload will distribute Internet connectivity to rural areas in Spain and Morocco through a partnership between Hispasat and Eurona Wireless Telecom, a Spanish communications company.

With the combination of Hispasat 30W-6 and another Hispasat spacecraft launched last year, more than 30,000 homes in Spain and parts of Morocco will have access to high-speed Internet services via satellite, officials said.

Hispasat 30W-6, formerly known as Hispasat 1F, will also enable connectivity on ships and trains in the Caribbean and Mediterranean regions.

The spacecraft also hosts a Spanish-designed experiment using photonics technology in an on-board Ka-band receiver, demonstrating an advancement that could reduce the mass and volume of future communications satellites.

Hispasat 30W-6 began extending its power-generating solar panels soon after its launch Tuesday, officials said, and the craft’s main thruster will fire several times in the coming weeks to maneuver into a circular geostationary orbit, where its velocity will keep pace with Earth’s rotation.

The new satellite will hover over the equator at 30 degrees west longitude, where it will replace the aging Hispasat 30W-4 spacecraft, which launched in September 2002 from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas 2AS rocket.

The launch of Hispasat 30W-6 was scheduled for Feb. 25, but SpaceX delayed the mission to conduct extra testing on a pressurization system on Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing. A range conflict with a previously-scheduled launch of an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral last week kept the Falcon 9 flight grounded until Tuesday, SpaceX said.

Tuesday’s launch marked the 50th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and the fourth Falcon 9 flight of 2018. SpaceX has also logged one launch of the powerful triple-body Falcon Heavy rocket this year, bringing the company’s tally for 2018 to five missions.

SpaceX’s launch schedule has 30 missions on the calendar for this year, an increase from 18 in 2017.

Up to six Falcon 9 missions from three launch pads are planned over the next two months, beginning with a flight March 29 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a batch of 10 Iridium voice and data relay satellites.

SpaceX’s next resupply flight to the International Space Station is set for takeoff no earlier than April 2 from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, followed no sooner than April 5 by a Falcon 9 launch from nearby pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with Bangladesh’s first communications satellite.

A NASA astronomy satellite designed to search for planets circling other stars is being prepped for blastoff April 16 on a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, and five more satellites for Iridium’s upgraded mobile communications network could launch as soon as April 28 from Vandenberg in tandem with two U.S.-German probes to map Earth’s gravity field.

A high-power all-electric telecom satellite owned by SES could be ready for launch from Cape Canaveral in late April or early May.</s>SpaceX on Tuesday put Spanish satellite Hispasat 30W-6 into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the company announced. The American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company launched the satellite at 12.34 am, using a Falcon 9 rocket, reports Efe news.

It was placed in a geo-stationary orbit minutes later where it will now be testing its functionalities for several weeks. Following the test phase, the satellite will assume its final orbital position, 30 degrees West, and replace Hispasat 30W-4, in orbit since September 2002. The launch was initially scheduled for last week but was postponed after defects in the pressurization system on the Falcon 9’s payload fairing were detected.

“Falcon 9 flight 50 launches tonight, carrying Hispasat for Spain. At 6 metric tonnes and almost the size of a city bus, it will be the largest geo-stationary satellite we’ve ever flown,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Monday night prior to the launch. The satellite, manufactured by Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California, with significant contribution of the Spanish aerospace industry, will allow access to high-speed internet in rural areas and help address the digital divide in Latin America, Spain and North Africa, operator Hispasat said in a statement.

It will also reinforce the distribution of audiovisual content in Latin America and provide connectivity in high-speed trains or at sea in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

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SpaceX successfully launches Spanish communications satellite Hispasat 30W-6 into orbit on a Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.