But a Falcon 9 main-stage rocket achieved a successful ground-based touchdown in December, the first ever during an actual commercial space mission. It extended a set of landing legs and settled upright on the drone barge, which SpaceX had named Of Course I Still Love You.
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Meanwhile, the CRS-8 Dragon Resupply Mission is on its way to the International Space Station.
“It’s another step toward the stars”, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at a press conference afterwards, according to the Washington Post. The company blamed the blast in June 2015 on a faulty strut in the Falcon 9′s upper booster, which allowed a helium bottle to snap loose, causing the explosion of the rocket, cargo ship and all its contents just over two minutes into the flight.
An ocean landing costs much less in terms of fuel and offers much more flexibility than guiding a rocket back to a specific landing site on the ground.
Carrying almost 3175 kg of cargo, including expandable habitats and key medical research that will leverage benefits for the humanity, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft was headed to the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday.
This image provided by Bigelow Aerospace on April 6, 2016 shows an illustration of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), center right, attached to the International Space Station.
The delivery vehicle was packed with about 3175kg of food, supplies and science experiments, including a prototype inflatable habitat, bound for the orbital outpost.
It will also be a test bed for orbiting rental property that the North Las Vegas company hopes to launch in four years. SpaceX’s landing could lead to possibilities of the company reusing rockets for future launches, potentially saving the company money and even time.
The habitat is expected to stay affixed to the station for two years.
“We have a Falcon 9 on board”, a crewman on a nearby recovery vessel radioed to SpaceX mission control.
“It is just as fundamental in rocketry as it is in other forms of transport such as cars or planes or bicycles or anything”, said Musk, who also runs Tesla Motors.
The rocket lifted off on schedule at 16:43 local time (20:43 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
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As NPR’s Joe Palca reported earlier this week, the idea for inflatable habitats in space dates back to the 1990s when “the space agency was trying to figure out how to get astronauts to Mars, without the crew going insane living in a tiny capsule for months on end”.
