1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

SpaceX is getting really good at these rocket landings

By
CRS-9 Hosted Webcast
Sunday night was launch night (again) for SpaceX, with the mission deemed a success on all fronts.

Lifting off from Cape Canaveral at just gone midnight Sunday ET, the Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched its latest payload toward the International Space Station (ISS) before returning to Earth to nail its fifth flawless landing in eight months.

Recommended Videos

Despite a number of earlier landings culminating in a fiery mess, the determined SpaceX team marches on regardless, with every mission enabling it to further hone its reusable rocket technology.

Today’s mishap-free touchdown, this one on hard ground as opposed to a barge floating in the ocean, came eight minutes after the rocket’s launch.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said a post-landing inspection of the rocket showed that “all systems look good,” and so it’s “ready to fly again.”

Aiming to build a reliable reusable rocket system that dramatically reduces the cost of future space missions, SpaceX’s Sunday-night triumph marked its second successful landing on hard ground and comes eight months after the first. It’s also achieved three successful – and somewhat trickier – landings on a sea-based barge, the ocean landings offering a greater safety margin and more flexibility for future missions.

SpaceX’s payload-carrying Dragon capsule is scheduled to reach the space station in a couple of days’ time. A key part of its cargo is an International Docking Adapter (IDA), a 5-foot-wide Boeing-made metallic ring that’ll be fitted to the outside of the ISS to allow for the automatic docking of future visiting spacecraft.

An IDA was meant to arrive at the space station just over a year ago but was destroyed when a SpaceX rocket carrying the adapter exploded shortly after launch. This time around, however, we’re pleased to report the mission is going precisely according to plan.

Want to see the rocket come safely back to terra firma? Then jump to the 24:50 mark in the video above.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
SpaceX already has a date in mind for next Starship launch

SpaceX launched the mighty Starship for the first time in April last year, but it took a full seven months before it became airborne again.

Following the second test flight in November, SpaceX managed to get the Starship off the launchpad again just four months later in a spectacular flight that took place last week.

Read more
Take a high-speed ride on SpaceX’s emergency escape chute

SpaceX has put a Crew Dragon on Pad 40 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first time. This means that going forward, SpaceX will have two pads to choose from when sending astronauts to space.

Up to now, crews launching on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft lift off from Pad 39A at Kennedy, but having another launch site available gives NASA and SpaceX greater flexibility when planning missions by easing pressure on teams if scheduling issues and traffic conflicts arise.

Read more
SpaceX shares awesome rocket imagery from Starship flight

SpaceX’s third Starship test flight last Thursday was its best yet, far exceeding the first two missions, which took place last year and ended in huge fireballs just a few minutes in.

This time, the Starship -- comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship spacecraft -- kept on flying, with both parts reaching their destination points before breaking up on descent.

Read more