SpaceX’s last flight in June ended with its Falcon 9 rocket breaking up shortly after launch. When the rocket is meant to be recoverable after launch, you can see why this would be an… issue. CEO Elon Musk tried to improve his odds, this time around, pushing back the launch of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket to Monday night. Better weather this evening offered a 10 percent better chance of the rocket booster landing on solid ground in a recoverable state, and for those that watched the stream, it looked like a surprisingly stable landing: a bright flare of light followed by the appearance of a fully vertical rocket — this was the stage one landing. SpaceX is checking the rocket and satellite payloads now (update: all the 11 satellites were deployed successfully) and we’ll update when we hear more.
Just reviewed mission params w SpaceX team. Monte Carlo runs show tmrw night has a 10 higher chance of a good landing. Punting 24 hrs.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2015
Just reviewed mission params w SpaceX team. Monte Carlo runs show tmrw night has a 10 higher chance of a good landing. Punting 24 hrs.
SpaceX had also tried recovering its rockets with drone ships, but that unsuccessful too. If the company is able to reclaim rockets after they’ve launched once, it would help decrease the cost of launching, well, anything into space, which is probably why it’s so difficult to do. The full live broadcast is now live:
Source: SpaceX