Read on to learn why landing on an ocean platform is so important.
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Currently, spent rocket stages are typically discarded over water or uninhabited areas.
Halliwell said he’s challenged SpaceX to make SES the first satellite operator to fly the same rocket to orbit twice.
“If you’re reserving some fuel to slow down the [rocket], stop it, start it flying back in the opposite direction and fly it all the way back to the launch site… you know that’s going to take a lot of fuel”, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told The Christian Science Monitor in a January interview.
The static test fire is one of the final milestones that the two-stage rocket undergoes before it is sent aloft.
As it prepares to accomplish the near-impossible task of landing a rocket on a floating barge this week, Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX says its doesn’t actually expect to pull off the thrillingly hard feat.
The one issue which could cause a delay – is the turbulent Florida weather.
The 23-story-tall rocket, carrying a commercial communications satellite for Luxembourg-based SES SA, was scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:46 p.m. EST/2346 GMT. However, meteorologists with the U.S. Air Force have given a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions for launch.
If needed, SpaceX has a backup launch opportunity reserved on the Eastern range for Thursday, Feb. 25 at approximately the same time at 6:46 p.m. EST.
SpaceX’s main mission will be to launch the 11,750-pound SES-9 communications satellite into orbit over Asia, but the more dramatic, secondary goal will be what happens about 10 minutes after lift-off.
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.
The Boeing-built television broadcasting satellite will get an additional burst of energy from the Falcon 9’s second stage engine after Wednesday’s liftoff, shaving the time required for the craft’s own propulsion system to maneuver into position to begin a 15-year mission beaming video programming and data services across the Asia-Pacific. “SES-9 will also deliver high-speed broadband services and mobile backhaul to remote regions to enable the deployment of communications networks, such a banking and e-government services”.
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This makes things hard for SpaceX’s post-launch plans.
