Soaring through the upper atmosphere at hypersonic speed like a flying broomstick, the rocket deployed aerodynamic grid fins and fired a subset of its nine Merlin engines to slow down for landing on a barge stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles (650 kilometers) east of Florida’s Space Coast. In fact, it just finished test firing one of them at its Texas development facility. Fast forward a couple of months and the rocket’s engines came to life once more. That one is slated to head back into the sky again.
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What do you think about the progress SpaceX has made on reusable rockets? And since yesterday’s rocket refiring went off without a hitch (despite a more turbulent re-entry than the April 8th rocket) it stands to reason that the rocket from April will be good to go.
Since its successful touchdown on a barge in April, the first Falcon 9 to not explode during at-sea landing has been taking a heck of a trip from space to barge to port to truck.
After launching JCSAT-14 earlier this year, the Falcon 9 first stage landed on SpaceX’s autonomous spaceship drone ship (ASDS) in the Atlantic Ocean. No word from SpaceX, but SpaceNews’ Jeff Foust tweeted this.
The first-stage booster burned for a total of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the full duration for a single stage flight, on Thursday night.
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The first vehicle to successfully land intact after a commercial launch in December 2015 is set to go on vertical display outside SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX plans to send one back in the air. But the only way these recycled boosters can save the company money is if they can actually be re-used.
