Elon Musk on Friday announced that SpaceX will attempt to refly an orbital rocket and a spacecraft. Musk shared the news on his Instagram profile.
Elon Musk on Friday announced that SpaceX will attempt to refly an orbital rocket and a spacecraft. Musk shared the news on his Instagram profile.
“On Tuesday, SpaceX will attempt to refly both an orbital rocket and spacecraft for the first time. These are pictures of the last mission each flew. Love the view of our Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station as it passes over the illumination boundary,” Musk wrote.
In March this year, SpaceX successfully relaunched a used rocket in what many termed as a historic movie. Musk appeared on the company’s live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. “It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in space flight,” he said.
Instead of discarding rocket parts as debris, SpaceX is trying to guide the rocket's first stage back to Earth for an upright, controlled landing within 10 minutes after launch, so that it could be used again on a future mission.
Several attempts to land the Falcon 9's first stage on a floating ocean platform have failed -- with the rocket either colliding with the autonomous drone ship or tipping over.
But SpaceX has insisted that each attempt has helped engineers come closer to perfecting the technique.
A launch attempt Sunday night was postponed, Musk said, because Monday gave a 10 percent more favorable chance at a successful landing.
The stakes are high for SpaceX, which has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to supply the astronauts living at the International Space Station over numerous back-and-forth trips with its Dragon cargo ship.
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