SpaceX launches 15,000-pound TV satellite to orbit on its 30th mission of the year (photos)

SpaceX’s 30th launch of 2026 is in the books.

One of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday (March 10) at 12:19 a.m. EDT (0419 GMT), carrying the 15,000-pound (6,800-kilogram) EchoStar XXV TV satellite skyward.

The Falcon 9’s first stage, a vehicle known as Booster 1085, came back to Earth nearly nine minutes later as planned, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” It was the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a company mission description.

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The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying EchoStar XXV to distant geosynchronous transfer orbit, where the satellite was deployed on schedule 35 minutes after liftoff.

EchoStar XXV will make its own way to geostationary orbit, a circular path 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth. After a series of checkouts, the satellite will start beaming TV signals down for customers of the Dish Network, a subsidiary of Colorado-based EchoStar.

Tuesday’s launch was a relative rarity for SpaceX these days — a mission that wasn’t devoted to building out the company’s giant Starlink broadband megaconstellation. Twenty-four of SpaceX’s 30 orbital launches in 2026 have been Starlink missions.