Tag: Reusability
-
Ride aboard the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage on descent
Take a virtual trip from space back to planet Earth with an sped up video clip showing the eye-popping on-board views from the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage booster Friday as it plummeted back to Earth, opened aerodynamic steering fins and fired its engines for a final braking maneuver just before touchdown. The 156-foot-tall booster…
-
SpaceX logs successful late afternoon launch for Thaicom
The Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad at 5:39 p.m. EDT (2139 GMT) Friday in this view from the roof the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: SpaceX A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral and climbed into space Friday, propelling a Thai television relay satellite into orbit…
-
SpaceX logs successful late afternoon launch for Thaicom
The Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad at 5:39 p.m. EDT (2139 GMT) Friday in this view from the roof the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: SpaceX A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral and climbed into space Friday, propelling a Thai television relay satellite into orbit…
-
Falcon 9 sails through customary preflight engine firing
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ignited its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday evening in a critical milestone before liftoff with a commercial Thai communications satellite later in the week. Held down by restraints at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad, the two-stage booster fired its engines for…
-
Timeline for Falcon 9’s launch of the Thaicom 8 satellite
The Falcon 9 rocket’s fifth flight of the year will take off from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, heaving the Thaicom 8 communications satellite into orbit on an easterly trajectory from Florida’s Space Coast. It will take about 32 minutes to inject the approximately 6,800-pound (3,100-kilogram) spacecraft into a highly elliptical geostationary transfer orbit on the…
-
SpaceX pencils in July for next Falcon 9 landing at Cape Canaveral
A first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket returned to its first landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in December. Credit: SpaceX The next chance for SpaceX to return a Falcon 9 booster to landing at Cape Canaveral will come in mid-July, when the company plans to launch a Dragon supply ship to the…
-
India flies winged space plane on experimental suborbital launch
India’s prototype reusable space plane blasted off at 7 a.m. local time Monday. Credit: ISRO A prototype for a future winged Indian spaceship took off early Monday on a suborbital flight 65 kilometers (40 miles) over the Bay of Bengal and steered itself to an on-target splashdown, testing a heat shield and guidance, navigation and…
-
India readies reusable launch vehicle testbed for flight
Artist’s concept of India’s reusable launch vehicle demonstrator. Credit: ISRO India’s space agency plans to boost a sleek winged prototype spacecraft into the upper atmosphere aboard a solid-fueled rocket early Monday on a short test flight that will end with a controlled, unpowered glide to a simulated runway landing in the Bay of Bengal. The…
-
India readies reusable launch vehicle testbed for flight
Artist’s concept of India’s reusable launch vehicle demonstrator. Credit: ISRO India’s space agency plans to boost a sleek winged prototype spacecraft into the upper atmosphere aboard a solid-fueled rocket early Monday on a short test flight that will end with a controlled, unpowered glide to a simulated runway landing in the Bay of Bengal. The…
-
Latest recovered Falcon 9 first stage welcomed into 39A HIF
The recently recovered Falcon 9 first stage (F9-0024-S1) has arrived inside SpaceX’s Pad 39A Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) following its recovery after the JCSAT-14 launch. The stage is being housed alongside the other two recovered cores, providing a glimpse into the triple-core processing that will be conducted ahead of the maiden launch of the Falcon…