Tag: Reusability
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Video: SpaceX lands rocket on drone ship for first time
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster steered toward a first-ever landing on a drone ship floating 185 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean minutes after blasting off from Florida with a space station cargo ship. The 156-foot-tall booster, slowed by one of its Merlin rocket engines, descended to the football field-sized vessel about 8…
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SpaceX hopes to sell used Falcon 9 boosters for as low as $40 million
The Falcon 9 first stage booster recovered after a Dec. 21 launch at Cape Canaveral is seen inside SpaceX’s hangar in Florida. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX intends to cut the price of a Falcon 9 rocket launch by up to 30 percent when flying with reused first stage boosters, an achievement the company still hopes to…
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TV broadcasting satellite finally launched on Falcon 9
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 6:35 p.m. EST (2335 GMT) Friday. Credit: SpaceX Powering off the planet just after sunset Friday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral with the multi-mission SES 9 communications satellite to link millions of homes, businesses, ships and airplanes across the Asia-Pacific. The commercial telecom…
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Commercial Falcon 9 launch delayed to Thursday
Credit: SpaceX SpaceX called off the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday to make sure the booster’s supply of super-chilled cryogenic liquid oxygen is cold enough to support the delivery of the 5.8-ton SES 9 commercial communications satellite to an orbit nearly 25,000 miles above Earth. The launch company said…
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Live coverage: SpaceX finally launches Falcon 9 rocket
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral with the SES 9 communications satellite. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter. SpaceX’s live video coverage begins at 6:25 p.m. EST (2325 GMT).
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Falcon 9 rocket to give SES 9 telecom satellite an extra boost
The Falcon 9 rocket stands at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad with the SES 9 satellite. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX and SES, owner of a 5.8-ton commercial telecom satellite poised for launch from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, struck a deal to tweak the Falcon 9 rocket’s standard launch profile to give the SES 9 spacecraft…
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SES eager to fly satellite aboard used Falcon 9 rocket
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket stands on its landing pad at Cape Canaveral after a successful touchdown following a Dec. 21 launch with 11 Orbcomm communications satellites. Credit: SpaceX In one of the strongest public endorsements of SpaceX’s initiative to put a reusable launcher on the commercial market, a top official from…
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Flight timeline for Falcon 9’s launch of SES 9
Updated after scrubs. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Friday evening, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the SES 9 television broadcast satellite into orbit 31 minutes later. The 229-foot-tall rocket is poised for launch from Complex 40 at 6:35 p.m. EST (2335 GMT) Friday at…
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Falcon 9 clears static fire test before launch this week
The Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin 1D first stage engines fired Monday while the booster was on Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX’s launch team in Cape Canaveral fueled a Falcon 9 rocket with super-chilled liquid propellants and briefly fired the first stage’s nine Merlin engines Monday in a customary preflight test…
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Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard booster flies again
Two months after it flew into space and landed smoothly, Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard booster made the trip again Friday, proving it can be reused for future space tourism jaunts and laying the groundwork for a future commercial satellite launcher, the company said. The hydrogen-fueled single stage rocket took off and landed at a…