At 12:53 am, it completed a soft landing only a few miles south of its launch pad while SpaceX’s Dragon capsule continued towards the ISS. Set down on top of the rocket was a Dragon capsule filled with almost 5,000 pounds (2,268 kg) of food, supplies and devices, consisting of a mini DNA sequencer, the very first to fly in area. In April the company landed its third rocket on land, after its engine was restarted when the rocket was 3,600ft in the air.
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California based SpaceX landed its fifth rocket landing Monday morning, sending a commercial cargo craft to the International Space Station and returning to Florida’s Space Coast in dramatic night time fashion.
“The stage one came back to land, and if you missed the sonic boom, it’s right there at Landing Complex 1”, vice president of flight reliability for SpaceX, Hans Koenigsmann, said. CEO Elon Musk has said the technology could dramatically reduce the cost of spaceflight as boosters can be used multiple times.
The Dragon Spacecraft will deliver nearly 5,000 pounds of cargo to the space-station crew.
It’s main objective is to provide a port for spacecraft bringing astronauts to the station in the future.
Nasa needs the new docking set-up at the space station before Americans can fly there in crew capsules set to debut next year.
Among the cargo is the first of two worldwide docking adapters, which will allow US commercial spacecraft to dock to the station when transporting astronauts in the near future.
Kirk Shireman, NASA’s International Space Program Manager said “Each commercial resupply flight to the space station is a significant event”.
Dragon is scheduled to leave ISS on August 29 and subsequently splash down in the Pacific Ocean with more than 3,300 pounds of science, hardware, crew supplies and spacewalk tools.
Boeing is now working on a new manned capsule called the Crew Space Transportation System (CST-100) Starliner, which will be docking at the ISS via the IDA connector.
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NASA has been stuck riding Russian-made rockets to the International Space Station since shuttles stopped flying five years ago. The next step will be launching NASA astronauts from US soil; for now, Americans are hitching rides on Russian rockets.
