“Completed rocket static fire with all systems green this time. Launch window opens in 10 days,” Elon Musk tweeted Thursday evening, providing a link to the video above of the brief static fire of the Falcon 9’s first stage at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Musk had previously said that the need to perform another static fire, along with other activity at Vandenberg, would push back the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch to September 29-30.
Meanwhile, the missile test Musk alluded to over the weekend as another reason for the delay is now a little better understood: the Vandenberg website now lists a Minuteman III in the early morning hours Sunday.
Onwards and upwards, this launch is a another step to an affordable space future for mankind. I wait with baited breath.