Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, April 4th.  The Sun will rise at 7:17.  It’ll be up for 12 hours and 56 minutes, setting at 8:14.  The Moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 4:24 tomorrow morning.

Last Thursday SpaceX launched a communications satellite, SES-10 toward geostationary orbit using a used Falcon 9 first stage booster, that landed last April.  To them it’s not a used rocket but a flight proven booster.  Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO is not going to try launch this booster a third time, but will give it to the Cape Kennedy Visitors Center.  Re-usability is the key, according to Musk to his plans to get to Mars and to possibly reduce the cost of getting payloads into orbit by as much as 30% than his already lowest prices in the industry.  Besides landing the booster on their automated drone ship, they were able to recover the two halves of the fairing that protects a satellite as it ascends through the atmosphere.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The second launching of this particular booster with the SES-10 satellite. Credit SpaceX video feed.

The video feed cut out during the landing of the booster, but the next shot was of the booster standing upright on the drone ship. Credit SpaceX video feed.