A trip to Kennedy Space Center in Florida to see the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch of the GOES-U weather satellite. We setup on the Banana River Bridge on FL-528 in Cape Canaveral. This was 14 miles from the launch site, and 7 from the landing site.
Banana River Bridge area before Launch
We ran into this equipment at the Banana River bridge about 3 hours before launch. This was equipment for USLaunchReport.com which produced a beautiful video of the GOES-U launch here.
The photos of the crowds were taken approximately an hour before launch. The rest of the available area filled in shortly before launch and traffic seemingly stopped on the highway.
GOES-U Launch from Kennedy Space Center
The Falcon Heavy rocket launched at 5:26pm EDT on June 25, 2024 carrying the GOES-U satellite to orbit. The 2 Falcon9 boosters landed successfully back at the Kennedy Space Center landing zones. We were setup at the exact coordinates of 28.405583, -80.648194. A position about 10-20 feet to the left would be preferred to get the power pole more out of the photo during launch. From this location I was able to view the full launch and landing.
Falcon 9 Booster Landings
This was a lot cooler than I had expected. The boosters were falling very fast towards the earth before firing the landing burn and landing gently on the landing zone.
