Cosmic Log
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell isn’t satisfied with last week’s history-making relaunch and landing of a previously flown Falcon 9 rocket.
The way she sees it, rocket reusability doesn’t really count unless the rocket can be reused “almost as rapidly as you turn around an aircraft.”
“Our challenge right now is to refly a rocket within 24 hours,” she said here today at the 33rd Space Symposium. “That’s when we’ll really feel like we got the reusability just right.”
SpaceX took nearly a year to relaunch its first “flight-proven” Falcon 9 booster, but within a year or two, company founder Elon Musk expects to be able to launch the same rocket day after day.
He also foresees a time when all the major components of a Falcon 9 rocket can be flown again — not just the first-stage booster, but also the nose cone and perhaps even the rocket’s upper stage.
That could drive the cost of a launch to less than 1 percent of what it is today — for example, $600,000 rather than the current $62 million list price for a Falcon 9 rocket launch.
“The significance of today is proving that it’s possible to do that,” Musk said.
Musk discussed the implications of the first-ever reuse of an orbital-class rocket today during a news briefing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, just a couple of hours after SpaceX successfully put the SES-10 communications satellite into geostationary transfer orbit.
Today SpaceX did something it’s never done before: reusing a Falcon 9 rocket booster that’s already been launched and landed.
The Falcon 9 mission to send the SES-10 communications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit lifted off at 6:27 p.m. ET (3:27 p.m. PT) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, marking a milestone in SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s drive to lower the cost of access to space.
More remarkably, the booster landed once more at sea after sending a payload into orbit. SpaceX was even able to bring the rocket’s payload fairing down for a parachute-aided splashdown in the Atlantic, Musk reported afterward.
“It’s an amazing day for space as a whole, for the space industry,” he said just after the landing. He paid tribute to the SpaceX team, saying “it’s been 15 years to get to this point.”
As he spoke, hundreds of SpaceX’s employees were cheering at the company’s California headquarters, and the launch webcast was getting 140,000 simultaneous views.
For the second time in a week, weather worries caused a delay in SpaceX’s launch of the EchoStar 23 communications satellite – but this time, liftoff took place less than a half-hour later than planned.
Tonight’s Falcon 9 rocket launch sent the satellite on its way from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the first time a purely commercial satellite launch took place at a pad that once served as the sending-off point for Apollo moon trips and space shuttle flights.
High winds have forced SpaceX to postpone its launch of the EchoStar 23 communications satellite, a mission requiring so much oomph that the company won’t even try landing the first-stage booster afterward.
The Falcon 9 rocket was due to lift off in the wee hours of March 15 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but SpaceX decided to wait out the winds.
SpaceX’s first-ever commercial rocket launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center was picture-perfect, but the landing was arguably even more photogenic – or should we say “dronogenic”?
The company’s Falcon 9 rocket quickly rose into the clouds over Launch Pad 39A, the Florida takeoff point for Apollo moon missions and space shuttle flights. Within just a few minutes, SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule separated from the rocket and headed toward the International Space Station for a cargo delivery.
Meanwhile, a camera-equipped drone captured a thrilling view of the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster descending through the clouds, firing its engines and touching down on SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, on the Florida coast not far from where its flight began.
SpaceX sent a rocket rising from NASA’s historic Launch Complex 39A today for the first time since the space shuttle fleet retired, marking a new chapter for a pad that served as the springboard for Apollo moon missions.
The Falcon 9 rocket sent a robotic Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station with almost 5,500 pounds of supplies and experiments, under the terms of SpaceX’s multimillion-dollar contract with NASA.
As a bonus, the rocket’s first-stage booster flew itself back to a perfect touchdown at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, not far from the Kennedy Space Center launch site in Florida. That’s part of SpaceX’s plan for reusing hardware and driving down the cost of space launches even further.
SpaceX postponed the first launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center since the last shuttle flight in 2011, due to concerns about a control system on the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage.
The Falcon 9 had been due to loft a robotic Dragon cargo capsule into orbit from the center’s Launch Pad 39A in Florida, delivering 5,500 pounds worth of supplies and experiments for the International Space Station.
But with less than 20 seconds left in today’s countdown, SpaceX’s mission managers decided they needed more time to work through a nagging technical issue with the controls for the second stage’s rocket engine nozzle..
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off for the first time in five months to put 10 advanced Iridium Next telecommunication sateliites in orbit – and demonstrate that the company’s innovative launch-and-landing system was back in stride.
Cheers went up from a crowd of hundreds of SpaceX employees at the company’s headquarters as they watched the rocket ascend from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:54 a.m. PT. The cheers rose again minutes later when the Falcon 9’s first stage landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the first time.
Today’s liftoff came after a spectacular launch pad explosion on Sept. 1 that destroyed a different Falcon 9 and its $200 million Amos-6 satellite payload.
SpaceX has postponed the return to flight for its Falcon 9 rocket until Jan. 14 at the earliest, due to a gloomy weather forecast for the next few days at its California launch site.
The launch of 10 Iridium Next telecommunications satellites had been scheduled for Jan. 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base. But in a series of tweets, Iridium and SpaceX said the liftoff had to be put off due to a combination of windy, rainy weather and scheduling conflicts.