SpaceX has successfully landed an unmanned rocket upright, after it sent eleven satellites into orbit. The Falcon-9 craft (photo) touched down about ten kilometers from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is not the first spacecraft to land a booster vertically; that was claimed by the New Shepard rocket in Texas (video, above). Nonetheless, the Falcon-9 flight, which also went twice as high as New Shepard, is a milestone towards reusing rockets.Rico says he's happy for Musk, happy for NASA, and happy for the guys on the ISS.
SpaceX aims to slash the cost of private space operations with such reusable components, but the company has not launched a rocket since one exploded in June of 2015. On that occasion, an unmanned Falcon-9 broke apart in flames, minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with debris tumbling into the Atlantic. The rocket, which had eighteen straight successes prior to the fateful flight, was in the process of sending a cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has a $1.6 billion dollar contract with NASA to send supplies to the ISS.
On Monday night, local time, the upgraded twenty-story-tall rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with the main stage returning about ten minutes later to a landing site about six miles south of the launch pad.
Near the peak of its flight, at an altitude of some two hundred kilometers, it propelled the rocket's second stage, laden with eleven communications satellites, into space.
It is the first time an unmanned rocket of this size has returned to land vertically on Earth. The flawless launch is a major success for privately-owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, the California-based company set up and run by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk has said the ability to return its rockets to Earth so they can be reused and re-flown would hugely reduce his company's operational costs in the growing but highly competitive private space launch industry.
SpaceX employees broke out in celebration as they watched a live stream of the white booster slowly descend to Earth in the form of a glowing orange ball.
"Welcome back, baby!", Musk said in a celebratory tweet.
SpaceX commentators described the launch and return, the first time an orbital rocket successfully achieved a controlled vertical landing on Earth, as "incredibly exciting".
"This was a first for us at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and I can't even begin to describe the joy the team feels right now having been a part of this historic first-stage rocket landing," the top officer at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Brigadier General Wayne Monteith, said in a statement.
SpaceX is aiming to revolutionise the rocket industry, which up until now has lost millions of dollars in discarded machinery and valuable rocket parts after each launch.
Several earlier attempts to land the Falcon 9's first stage on an ocean platform have failed.
22 December 2015
SpaceX has a historic upright landing
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