Over a month ago, SpaceX propelled a rocket to the sky. Now, the aerospace manufacturer did it again -- launching its Falcon 9 rocket and making it land on a floating barge at sea.
According to NPR, SpaceX recently launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The space transport services company did the historic event on an early Friday morning, landing some parts of the Falcon 9 rocket on a barge.
The good thing is that a second part (which is called a "stage") successfully went to space. The said stage is believed to be transporting a communications satellite.
It is worth noting that the titular space company achieved its first landing feat in April, after some series of unfortunate events. And even before they were even successful, their rocket only managed to return on solid ground.
Nonetheless, not only did SpaceX prove and demonstrated its capability of landing a rocket (Falcon 9) at sea but it also goes to show how they can "repeat the process."
SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk claimed that what they did was not a stunt, as they hope to reutilize the rockets in the future. In fact, he shared via social media his intentions to use the rocket as well as to increase the size of its storage hangar.
May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2016
The Washington Post, on the other hand, reports that SpaceX is gearing toward commercial spaceflight, along with Virgin Galactic (owned by Richard Branson) and Blue Origin (owned by Jeff Bezo). The latter, albeit being able to successfully land rockets in the past, is much more focused on lower passenger flights -- something that is quite far from the orbital payloads of SpaceX.
Since SpaceX is eager to reuse the primary stage rocket, it is only safe to say that they are planning to cut the total price of delivering stuff to space. It holds true that NASA is spending more or less $10,000 per pound.
