SpaceX has leased the landing pad, which sits roughly 7 miles south of the launch pad used Monday, from the U.S. Air Force on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
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It was the return to land of SpaceX’s spent Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Florida’s Space Coast at 12:45 a.m., sending almost 5,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station.
“With equipment to enable novel experiments never attempted before in space, and an worldwide docking adapter vital to the future of United States commercial crew spacecraft, we’re thrilled this Dragon has successfully taken flight”, said Kirk Shireman, NASA’s ISS program manager, in a statement Monday.
SpaceX aims to launch another load of space station supplies for NASA, including a critical docking port needed by new USA crew capsules set to debut next year.
Dragon is scheduled to depart the space station Monday, Aug. 29.
SpaceX successfully launched a critical space station docking port for astronauts early Monday, along with a DNA decoder for high-flying genetic research.
Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, tried previous year to deliver a ring for the first time, but the equipment was destroyed during a launch accident.
The delivery of these two pieces of cargo represent NASA teaming up with private companies to innovate in space, even as it retired its own fleet of space shuttles five years ago, meaning it now has to pay Russian Federation $82 million for each astronaut it ferries to and from the space station.
The capsules would dock to this ring and another due to fly in a year.
“Good launch, good landing, Dragon is on its way”, said NASA mission commentator George Diller. Furthermore, the United States space agency NASA verified that a second docking ring will probably be delivered next year.
Previously all rockets landed on autonomous drone ships floating in the ocean, but for this mission, the requirement was the rocket landing on the ground at Cape Canaveral. The ability to reuse rockets after launch is an imperative piece to that puzzle. The next three – one in April and two in May – featured sea landings, on a robotic ship named “Of Course I Still Love You”. “The docking adapter will permit crew capsules from Boeing and SpaceX to automatically rendezvous with the space station”.
The new docking adapter will allow Americans to land at the ISS in crew capsules.
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Another port – cobbled together from spare parts – will replace the one lost in the June 2015 launch accident. This Dragon craft contains about 5,000 pounds of NASA cargo, including supplies for the crew and a number of science experiments.
