The Age of Reusable Rockets.
SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 reusable rocket booster on a drone ship — a first for the company — following a launch from Cape Canaveral today (April 8).
This test flight with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board the Dragon spacecraft will return human spaceflight to the United States.. Fifth time's the charm!
Later tests attempted to land the rocket precisely on an autonomous spaceport drone ship (a barge commissioned by SpaceX to provide a stable landing surface at sea) or at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1), a concrete pad at Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX will attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket by landing it on a floating barge — dubbed "Of Course I Still Love You" — floating in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX now has shown it has the flexibility to retrieve the booster under a variety of launch configurations.
The first ground landing at LZ-1 succeeded in December 2015, and the first landing at sea on a drone ship in April 2016.
SpaceX gives names to its floating landing barges February 4, 2015 at 9:58 pm Robert Zimmerman Points of Information Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below. A rocket booster that SpaceX hoped would make its 50th successful landing after launch on Monday missed the autonomous ship in the Atlantic … Two weeks ago, SpaceX achieved a major milestone by landing the first stage of an orbital rocket on a floating barge 320 km (200 miles) off the Florida coast. SpaceX is targeting Wednesday, May 27 for Falcon 9’s launch of Crew Dragon’s second demonstration (Demo-2) mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.