Another calendar month , another discovery for SpaceX. The American company has managed to found and land a second Falcon 9 rocket on an autonomous barge , follow thefirst historical flatboat landinglast calendar month and the firstground landingin December 2015 .
The Falcon 9 , launched from Florida , was used to send a Japanese telecommunication orbiter into blank , which will ultimately be lifted to geosynchronous orbit , 36,000 kilometre ( 22,400 miles ) above the control surface .
The first leg of the rocket divide after it had hand space and mail the satellite on its means . To get back , it performed a " boostback burn mark " to get on the correct flight towards the lighter , and performed two more burns as it insert the air and as it near the landing platform . It landed on the same self-directed spaceport dawdler ship that was used last calendar month , discover “ Of Course I Still roll in the hay You ” .
Founder and CEO , Elon Musk hadtweetedpreviously that this Falcon 9 reentry was to be at a higher speed than the previous landing place , so the chance for success was “ maybe even , ” but the superfluous landing burns did the trick and he excitedly tweeted “ Woohoo ! ” as the rocket touched down . He later joked that he ’d have to increase the size of their rocket salad storage airdock .
May require to increase size of rocket storage airdock
— Elon Musk ( @elonmusk)May 6 , 2016
SpaceX is investing heavily in the reusability of its Eruca sativa fleet , believing that to be the key to reducing costs and making it easier and cheaper to get to space . A Falcon 9 rocket costs $ 60 million to build but just $ 200,000 to refuel .
“ If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplane , the toll of memory access to blank space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred , ” Elon Musk pronounce in astatementlast twelvemonth .
“ A fully reusable fomite has never been done before . That really is the primal breakthrough needed to revolutionise memory access to space . ”
SpaceX has yet to refly any of its land rockets , but the company is hope to send one back up as soon as June . Between these plans and the potential for a private Mars missionin 2018 , a new golden eld of space flight is truly beginning .
