{"id":14858,"date":"2017-02-20T21:37:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T13:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/photos-falcon-9-rocket-blasts-off-from-pad-39a-then-lands-nearby\/"},"modified":"2017-02-20T21:37:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T13:37:35","slug":"photos-falcon-9-rocket-blasts-off-from-pad-39a-then-lands-nearby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/photos-falcon-9-rocket-blasts-off-from-pad-39a-then-lands-nearby\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos: Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from pad 39A, then lands nearby"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket took off Sunday for the first time from launch pad 39A, a historic facility under lease from NASA, and delivered to orbit an uncrewed supply ship heading for the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The first stage booster returned to a landing at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station \u2014 9 miles (15 kilometers) to the south of pad 39A \u2014 the first such recovery on land in daylight.<\/p>\n

Liftoff occurred at 9:39 a.m. EST (1439 GMT) from pad 39A, a day after SpaceX called a last-minute abort to examine and replace a suspect actuator in the upper stage engine.<\/p>\n

Around two-and-a-half minutes later, the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage engines switched off, and the second stage\u2019s single Merlin engine ignited to propel the mission\u2019s cargo craft payload into orbit. Cold-gas nitrogen thrusters on the first stage booster re-oriented the vehicle to fly tail first, then a subset of its main engines fired in succession three times to guide the rocket back to Earth at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

The first stage\u2019s center engine conducted the final landing burn as four legs deployed from the base of the booster for touchdown. It was the eighth time SpaceX has recovered a rocket stage, the third time the booster has returned to land at Cape Canaveral, and the first such descent over land in daylight.<\/p>\n

Read our full story.<\/p>\n

These photos were released by SpaceX late Sunday and early Monday.<\/p>\n

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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket took off Sunday for the first time from launch pad 39A, a historic facility under lease from NASA, and delivered to orbit an uncrewed supply ship heading for the International Space Station. The first stage booster returned to a landing at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station \u2014 9 miles (15 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,1395,479,717,1602,428,1950,1702],"class_list":["post-14858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-dragon","tag-falcon-9","tag-international-space-station","tag-iss-cargo","tag-kennedy-space-center","tag-landing-zone-1","tag-launch-pad-39a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}