SpaceX just launched its sixth rocket of the year releasing two satellites into orbit

On Wednesday at 10:29 am ET, SpaceX successfully launched its sixth rocket of the year into space. It was not able to successfully land the first stage of its famed Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship. So far it has been able to release one of the two satellites into an extremely high orbit. Deployment of the second satellite will be happening shortly.

The first stage successfully separated from the second stage and and headed back towards the drone ship, a couple hundred miles off the coast.

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SpaceX attempted to land the first stage on the drone ship but it was masked in a thick cloud of smoke so at first it was unclear whether it had successfully landed. Later SpaceX has announced that  though the first stage was lost in this attempt, it was able to gather a lot of valuable information from the attempt.

The second stage continued to carry the two satellites out to geostationary transfer orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator. As the earth rotates, these satellites will stay above same regions of the planets. Eutelsat 117 West B will provide coverage to Latin America while ABS will provide services to portions of Asia and Africa.

The rocket launched out of SpaceX's launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, traveling twice as fast as a speeding bullet. It is carrying Paris-based Eutelsat's 117 WestB and Bermuda-based Asian Broadcast Satellite's (ABS) 2A satellites into orbit.

The Eutelsat satellite will provide Latin America with video, data, government, and mobile services and the ABS satellite will enable "direct-to-home" mobile, TV, and maritime signal across almost all of the Eastern world, Inverse reports.

These satellites will communicate with electromagnetic waves, such as light and radio waves. Eutelsat will communicate in the Ku band portion, which is at the 12-18 gigahertz portion of the microwave spectrum. For comparison, your home microwave operates at 2.45 gigahertz.

This launch follows a rapid and, so far, wildly successful string of launches and landings for the private spaceflight company.

SpaceX landed its first rocket on land in December. In April, for the first time ever, SpaceX managed to land at sea. The company has only been getting better at sea landings, nailing one on May 6 and another on May 27.

If SpaceX had successfully landed this rocket, it would have been the fifth rocket the company landed and retrieved. According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, one of these retrieved rockets could launch again as early as September. Reflying these rockets could cut the cost of spaceflight by as much as 30%, SpaceX says.

Although SpaceX says that these rockets are not technically reusable, its goal is to eventually refly them. During the launch, the ultimate finish line is to land the first stage.

When it lands a rocket, the drone ship then carries it to port where it is loaded on a truck and taken back to the launch site to be reflown. 

At the launch site the rocket is refueled and, the hard part, retested to see if it will be able to go back up to space. The engineers need to make sure the rocket wasn't jostled in flight or deformed from the extreme heat conditions when reentering the atmosphere.

After Wednesday, the company might not launch again until mid-July when a Falcon 9 will carry the 11th Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

The weather was good for the launch, with mostly clear skies and a temperature of 88 degrees,  allowing for an on-time launch.