Garfield Ekon
Staff Writer
The last Falcon 9 lift off was on Friday morning at 5:12am. The rocket dramatically pierced the dark skies of Cape Canaveral on April 5 as space exploration enthusiasts watched the live blast off and report “the Falcon 9 first stage booster, tail number B1069 in the SpaceX fleet, launched for a 14th time.”
But what is the origin story of these missions, which residents of The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos often witness from their quiet islands not too far off the coast of Florida.
SpaceX was founded on March 14, 2002, by United States (US) billionaire, Elon Musk, with a huge dream of building reusable rockets, commercial spacecraft, and a number of other sophisticated technology, now it is adding great benefits to normal live, and playing a dominant role in tourism.
Two decades later, SpaceX is quietly leading in many spheres, with the building of 2,000-satalite, Starlink Internet constellation, for the holding of 30,000 spacecraft. It is advanced in ramping up an orbital space tourism programme, and for crewed missions to the International Space Station.
It is now regularly launching and landing rockets while carrying payloads for a wide range of customers, from private companies to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), while also making leaps for The Bahamas tourism industry, and cruise tourism.
From a strategic collaboration, involving Space Exploration Technologies Corp, an exploration is being undertaken for a mission design, where one of the company’s autonomous drone ships will serve as a Falcon 9 landing location east of the Exumas, offering a spectacle that will be visible only in The Bahamas.
In August 2023, Royal Caribbean Group, disclosed plans to for implementation of SpaceX Starlink, making the entity the first in the cruise industry to adopt its high-speed, low-latency connectivity for a better onboard experience for guests and crew fleet-wide.
Deployment of the Starlink technology across the fleet, leveraged the awareness obtained from the trial onboard from Freedom of the Seas, which received tremendous positive feedback from guests and crew.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, designated AV-085, will launch Boeing’s CST-100 Satrliner spacecraft on its first mission with astronauts, known as the Crest Test Flight, to the International Space Station, by the end of April. The rocket will fly in a vehicle configuration, with two solid rocket boosters, and a dual-engine Centaur upper stage.
