WATCH: SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 9 Rocket, Months After Blast

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Simply months after a launch pad explosion thwarted its final try, SpaceX has efficiently launched an unmanned rocket into orbit. The launch, which unfolded Saturday at California's Vandenberg Air Pressure Base, marked a vital — and costly — take a look at for the non-public house firm within the aftermath of its current, very seen misfire.

Shortly after the launch, the two-stage rocket indifferent its first stage, which subsequently landed safely on a platform within the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX live-streamed your entire course of alongside the way in which. You'll be able to watch it right here or play the video embedded on the high of this put up.

The Falcon 9 rocket is bearing 10 industrial satellites for Iridium Communications, which presently operates a community of dozens of cell communications satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX is underneath contract with Iridium to launch no less than 70 satellites into orbit in a sequence of seven launches for the corporate — starting with Saturday's batch.

The brand new satellites will change the present community, in "what will likely be one of many largest 'tech upgrades' in historical past," in response to a press launch from SpaceX.

Nonetheless, a cloud of uncertainty hung over the launch, after an explosion left a wreckage of final September's take a look at in Cape Canaveral, Fla. SpaceX founder Elon Musk mentioned on the time that the blast got here whereas staff have been nonetheless loading propellant into the rocket, although nobody was bodily harmed within the accident.

Along with destroying the rocket itself — a Falcon 9, just like the rocket being launched Saturday — final yr's blast additionally obliterated a $200 million communications satellite tv for pc. The Israeli satellite tv for pc "had been leased by Fb as a part of a undertaking to carry high-speed web to elements of Africa," NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reviews for our Newscast unit.

A months-long investigation by SpaceX dug into what went unsuitable — "the hardest puzzle to unravel that we have ever needed to clear up," Musk mentioned. That probe wrapped up earlier this month, concluding the accident "was triggered by the failure of a high-pressure helium tank, considered one of three used to pressurize the second stage liquid oxygen tank," in response to CBS Information.

The Federal Aviation Administration then signed off on that investigation, approving the brand new licence for Saturday's launch.

Previous to final yr's accident, SpaceX had managed a string of high-profile successes, together with touchdown a Falcon 9 on a floating barge.