LOS ANGELES: SpaceX on Thursday (Aug 24) launched the first satellite designed and built entirely in Taiwan, a spacecraft that aims to boost disaster forecasts and mapping, environmental observation and space research. SpaceX successfully fired off another Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on Thursday (24 August) lifting Formosat-5, a small Earth observation satellite for Taiwan's National Space Organization (NSPO), to low-Earth orbit. The Formosat-5 satellite lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base at 11:51 a.m. atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which successfully landed its first stage on a drone ship floating in the Pacific Ocean as the second stage continued on and deployed the satellite. "This is the 15th successful landing of a Falcon 9," Lyons said on the live webcast, as cheers erupted at SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California. The landing of the Falcon 9 first stage aboard the drone ship Just Read the Instructions was the latest in a string of successful recoveries at sea or on shore by SpaceX, which sees reusability of major rocket components as key to driving down launch costs.
FORMOSAT-5, the first satellite fully designed by Taiwan's National Space Organization, is launched into low-earth orbit by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.