More than 2 tons of supplies and gear are speeding toward the International Space Station, after a SpaceX Falcon rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., early Monday.
Advertisement
Aboard the rocket is a replica of the docking port destroyed in a SpaceX launch accident last summer.
The CRS-9 mission, which was sending a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station with supplies for astronauts, successfully launched on July 18.
As per NASA, the Dragon spacecraft is loaded with about 5,000 pounds of experiments and materials for the International Space Station.
Better yet, Space X was able to recover the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket, this time back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
As an extra treat, the company brought its leftover first-stage booster back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for a vertical landing only the second such land landing for an orbital mission and the ultimate in recycling. This marks the Hawthorne space company’s second rocket booster landing on land since December. Also aboard the capsule was a metal docking ring of diameter 7.8 feet (2.4 m), that will be connected to the station, letting industrial spaceships under advancement by SpaceX and Boeing Co. ferry astronauts to the station, a $100-billion laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. “Even if the landing fails, that has no bearing on the success of the resupply mission – just as long as the Dragon gets to its proper orbit”.
The worldwide docking adapter will function as a parking spot for space taxis, enabling commercial spaceships carrying astronauts to latch on securely to the orbiting outpost.
The Dragon spacecraft with the supplies will deploy about 10 minutes after liftoff and will arrive at the space station about two days later.
Of the items headed Dragon is bringing to the station, the most critical piece of cargo includes an worldwide docking adapter, or IDA.
“LZ1, Falcon 9 has landed”, a commentator on SpaceX’s YouTube channel said, referencing the company’s Landing Zone 1 and setting off cheers from employees.
The unmanned rocket Falcon 9 was scheduled to launch earlier, today. So far, it has successfully landed a Falcon on the ground once and on an ocean platform in three out of its last four attempts. Test flights for these two should start sometime next year. After the launch and landing are finished, this will revert to a fully rewatchable video.
Advertisement
All of these touchdowns are part of SpaceX’s effort to develop fully and rapidly reusable rockets, which company founder and CEO Elon Musk has said could dramatically reduce the cost of spaceflight.
