Today’s attempt was the fourth time SpaceX had tried to land its Falcon 9 on a drone ship.
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“What was different about this [landing] is that the rocket landed instead of putting a hole in the ship or tipping over …”
Dragon will also bring important cargo back to Earth in May, carrying some of the biological samples collected during astronaut Scott Kelly’s historic one-year mission in space.
The successful autonomous touchdown of the booster at sea marked another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his privately owned Space Exploration Technologies in the quest to develop a cheap, reusable rocket, expanding his edge in the burgeoning commercial space launch industry. SpaceX’s sea landing demonstrates that it is possible to recover a much larger and faster-moving rocket even when its trajectory, as in this case, does not allow for a terrestrial landing. SpaceX employees, NASA officials and a great number of Internet audience watched a live video feed that showed the rocket moving down to the ship, landing upright and then standing still. In fact, around a third of SpaceX missions will require ocean landings, according to information shared by the company.
Check out Space X’s Falcon 9 landing on a drone ship for yourself.
The expandable structure has the potential to revolutionise work and life for astronauts on the space station.
The Falcon 9 rocket was launched by SpaceX from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:43 PM. It has been found that the stage that has successfully landed at Cape Canaveral in December has been saved for display at SpaceX’s Hawthorne headquarters.
After several failed attempts Space X has successfully landed their Falcon 9 rocket on a remote drone ship at sea. “In order for us to really open up access to space we have to have full and rapid reusability”, an elated Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, said at a press conference.
Musk’s goal is to make rockets as reusable as airplanes and as cost-effective, too.
The U.S. space agency is interested in expandable habitats to serve as crew living quarters during eventual three-year trips to and from Mars.
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Once it arrives in port, ground teams will retract the booster’s landing legs, rotate it horizontal and drive it to a SpaceX facility at nearby Cape Canaveral – likely launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Musk said.
