Astronauts aboard the International Space Station can expect a delivery in two days, courtesy of SpaceX.
A Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft took to the skies early this morning, deploying nearly 5,000 pounds of new hardware and experiments to the ISS. But SpaceX also executed another successful rocket landing back here on Earth. It touched down at at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, marking the second successful ground landing for the commercial spaceflight firm.
The first ground landing occurred in December. In April, SpaceX also completed a trickier ocean landing, which requires the rocket to contend with a moving target, something it has replicated twice since then. As a result, last night's landing is SpaceX's fifth successful one.
"It's a great day for SpaceX, a great day for NASA," Joel Montalbano, NASA's deputy manager of ISS utilization, said during a post-launch news conference, Space.com reports.
As documented by SpaceX's Twitter feed, the various stages commenced effortlessly, ending less than 10 minutes later, when the Falcon 9 landed at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at the Cape Canaveral.
Dragon on its way to @Space_Station, Falcon on its way home pic.twitter.com/EpfUKBmoWi
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 18, 2016
"We just completed the post-landing inspection and all systems look good," SpaceX chief Elon Musk tweeted this morning from LZ-1. "Ready to fly again."
Meanwhile, the Dragon—packed with supplies and materials for the crew and their investigations—continues on a course toward the ISS. The unpiloted spacecraft carries an international docking adapter (IDA) that will allow the station to prepare for a new era of human spaceflight, among other things.
Described by NASA's Steven Siceloff in a blog post, the hardware is "a ring weighing more than 1,000 pounds that will provide a standardized connection point to the station for visiting spacecraft," including the in-development Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon.
Today's achievement is a big win for SpaceX, which last month suffered a setback when a rocket booster docking ended with the Falcon 9 crash-landing and exploding. According to Musk, the thrust of one of the shuttle's three landing engines may have been too low; the company is already working on upgrades, with a fix expected later this year.
Traditionally, capsules crash into the ocean because getting them to land upright and intact is a complicated engineering feat. But getting it right means space firms like SpaceX can save money and time by reusing rockets rather than deploying new ones for each flight.
While SpaceX performs booster-assisted satellite launches and cargo resupply missions, some of its former employees are working on a way to get mini satellites into orbit with less complication and expense. Their company, called Vector, is trying to get the cost down to between $2 million and $3 million per launch.
Source: pcmag.com
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