SpaceX, the dream of an entrepreneur named Elon Musk, managed to soft-land a rocket on a drone ship for the second time in a row.
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The rocket, which was carrying a communications satellite, not only launched safely, but landed back on Earth as planned on an ocean platform.
SpaceX did it again early Friday, landing a rocket stage on a ship in the ocean minutes after blasting off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with a Japanese commercial communications satellite. The landing represents just the second successful drone ship landing and the third overall landing of a rocket first-stage for SpaceX, with the first having set down on dry land. The rocket placed the communication satellite into the orbit and then returned back landing on an offshore platform. Another Falcon rocket had touched down on a ground-based landing pad at Cape Canaveral in December. But it was wrong. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk upgraded the chances to “maybe even” shortly before the launch.
In the meantime, as Musk wrote on Twitter, he “may need to increase size of rocket storage hangar”. Blue Origin, the company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has launched and landed its New Shepard rocket three separate times, but those milestones occurred during suborbital test flights rather than orbital launches.
All of these landing attempts are part of SpaceX’s effort to produce a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, which it said will dramatically reduce the cost of space transport.
The launch was the fourth of more than a dozen flights scheduled this year, with SpaceX contracted to deliver satellites for a range of clients including NASA. A landing at sea proved more elusive and required several tries.
This is the eighth major launch operation for the Eastern Range this year.
Today’s achievement, however, surpasses the technical difficulty of the first feat by leaps and bounds, bringing the company’s ultimate prospects of Mars mission closer to fruition.
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The landing, which took place in the Atlantic Ocean, was not expected to go well after Musk said there may be additional complications due to a “faster and hotter” entry.
