Then the first stage of the Falcon 9 made history with a ideal landing at a SpaceX landing pad at Cape Canaveral.
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The launch is commissioned by SES, a Luxembourg-based company that specializes in worldwide satellite communications.
At a pre-launch news conference, SES’s Martin Halliwell told reporters that SES has no issue in flying a re-used (rocket’s) first stage.
SpaceX tested a Falcon 9 rocket’s main engines on Monday in a test of their readiness for a launch on Wednesday. “Given this mission’s unique GTO profile, a successful landing is not expected”, the mission overview stated.
All of the experimental landing attempts are part of SpaceX’s effort to lower launch costs by recovering and reusing rockets, rather than discarding them after one use.
SpaceX said that due to the SES satellite’s heavy weight, the rocket that is going to be launched this week will fly nearly twice as quick as the one used in December, until it gets separated from the second-stage motor.
Air Force meteorologists are predicting a 60 percent chance of favorable weather conditions at launch time.
SES, which now operates a constellation of 53 satellites, has three more satellites under contract to fly on SpaceX Falcon rockets through 2017, Halliwell said.
As SpaceX attempted a drone ship landing last month, Elon Musk explained the landings are needed when it is “just not physically possible to return to launch site”. NASA said the first launch window on Wednesday is between 18:46 to 20:23 Eastern.
Upon reaching orbit, SES-9 will be the largest satellite that will provide services to the Asia-Pacific region. The satellite will be deployed approximately 31 minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX sells new Falcon 9 rockets for about $61 million, the company’s website shows.
SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 on solid ground previous year, but numerous attempts at landing on barges in the Atlantic and Pacific have failed.
If SpaceX can land its first stage Falcon 9 on ocean platforms, it will prove that the company can readily retrieve rockets from the most hard, fuel-exhausting missions – the high velocity missions.
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Watch for Ken’s onsite launch reports direct from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
