● Launch Successful
Falcon 9 Block 4 | TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)
SpaceX · Space Launch Complex 40 · Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA
- SpaceX's 730th launch
- 215th consecutive success
- 401st flight from Space Launch Complex 40
- 2nd flight of booster B1045
Watch
Broadcast links from Launch Library 2. The player is YouTube’s privacy-enhanced embed, which sets nothing until you press play. Some broadcasters switch embedding off for their own streams — if the player will not start, the link above opens it on YouTube.
Theater mode — webcast, countdown, flight plan, nothing else →
A Real Ascent
18 April 2018 — NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, the 60th Falcon 9 flight. Altitude and speed through this flight’s whole climb to orbit, one reading a second from the launch webcast’s own telemetry.
499 readings, one a second, captured from the launch webcast’s telemetry and released into the public domain. This is the second stage’s track, which is what a webcast follows after separation — MECO is where the first stage stopped pushing. Measured on a flight that happened, not a prediction of one that has not.
The Mission
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA space telescope, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method. TESS will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, orbiting a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. The principal goal of the TESS mission is to detect small planets with bright host stars in the solar neighborhood, so that detailed characterizations of the planets and their atmospheres can be performed.
| Liftoff (NET) | Wed, 18 Apr 2018 22:51:31 UTC |
|---|---|
| Launch window | 22:51:31 UTC – 22:52:01 UTC |
| Target orbit | High Earth Orbit |
| Status | Launch Successful |
Launch Library 2 · fetched Sun, 20 Sep 2026 05:54:08 GMT
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