"Falcon 9 launches 143 spacecraft to orbit -- the most ever deployed on a single mission -- completing SpaceX's first dedicated SmallSat Rideshare Programme mission," SpaceX said in a tweet.
In addition, key science experiments returns from the space station through NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle, NASA said in a statement late on Friday.
This year, January 2 is when the earth, during its elliptical orbit around the Sun gets to the closest point it can get (Perihelion), which will be at 7.27 pm. The Earth will be 14,70,93,168 km from the Sun
These two missions are Extreme Ultraviolet High-Throughput Spectroscopic Telescope Epsilon Mission, or EUVST, and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer, or EZIE.
During this phase, the programme will mature critical technologies and make critical design decisions, as well as assess industry partnerships, NASA said on Friday.
The orbital correction was conducted at 11.13 a.m. when the two 25N engines on the orbiter-returner combination were operational for about 28 seconds, reports Xinhua news agency.
The nebula a cloud of gas in space -- is likely composed of debris from two stars that collided and merged into a single star, said a study published in the journal Nature.
Researchers at University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) in the US, have announced the detection of Yarkovsky acceleration on the near-Earth asteroid Apophis.
