{"id":15826,"date":"2015-12-22T23:53:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T15:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/round-trip-rocket-flight-gives-spacex-a-trifecta-of-successes\/"},"modified":"2015-12-22T23:53:44","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T15:53:44","slug":"round-trip-rocket-flight-gives-spacex-a-trifecta-of-successes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/round-trip-rocket-flight-gives-spacex-a-trifecta-of-successes\/","title":{"rendered":"Round-trip rocket flight gives SpaceX a trifecta of successes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The Falcon 9\u2019s ascent and descent tracks are seen in this long exposure photo taken just south of the launch and landing locations. Photo credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flying through the sky at supersonic speed, a Falcon 9 rocket stage descended to a historic landing at Cape Canaveral on Monday, returning to the spaceport minutes after boosting 11 Orbcomm communications satellites toward orbit on SpaceX\u2019s first flight since a major failure in June.<\/p>\n

Aside from the dramatic touchdown of the 156-foot booster stage and a return to service after a six-month grounding, SpaceX also debuted an upgraded Falcon 9 booster that can haul heavier payloads into orbit and make it easier for the rocket to come back to Earth and be reused.<\/p>\n

\u201c(From) everything we\u2019ve seen thus far, the mission appears to be perfect,\u201d said Elon Musk, SpaceX\u2019s billionaire founder and chief executive. \u201cThe satellites were deployed right on target and the Falcon 9 booster came back and landed, it looks like, almost dead center in the landing pad. And then the upper stage did a coast and then restarted to prove out the coast and restart capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Spaceflight Now members can read a transcript of a media conference call with Elon Musk after Monday\u2019s historic rocket flight. Become a member today and support our coverage.<\/h6>\n
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The landing achievement, which SpaceX said was a secondary objective on Monday\u2019s mission, is a big step toward proving the Falcon rocket can be reused, a key tenet for Musk\u2019s company\u2019s goal of slashing the costs of space transportation.<\/p>\n

The magnitude of the cost reduction could turn the launch market upside down if reusability can be perfected, Musk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Falcon rocket costs about $60 million to build,\u201d Musk said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a big jet, but the cost of the propellant, which is mostly oxygen and the gases, is only about $200,000, so that means that the potential cost reduction over the long term is probably in excess of a factor of 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visual splendor of the rocket\u2019s fall back to Earth was stunning to experienced launch spectators.<\/p>\n

After the Falcon 9\u2019s fiery liftoff from Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad at 8:29 p.m. EST Monday (0129 GMT Tuesday), the rocket steered on a trajectory northeast from the launch base, accelerating to nearly 4,000 mph and 50 miles altitude in two-and-a-half minutes.<\/p>\n

Then the first stage detached from the Falcon 9\u2019s upper stage, with a nudge from a new pusher separation device flying for the first time on Monday\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

A single Merlin engine lit a few seconds later to propel the upper stage into orbit with the Falcon 9\u2019s Orbcomm passengers.<\/p>\n

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The Falcon 9 blasts off on its 20th mission Monday. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, the first stage booster, which usually falls into the ocean and is discarded, flipped around to point its nose back toward the Florida coastline.<\/p>\n

A subset of the first stage\u2019s nine Merlin engines ignited two times to reverse course and slow down for re-entry back into Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Musk said he was fairly confident in the chances for a smooth landing \u2014 he gave about a 60 to 70 percent chance of success \u2014 but he knew there was little margin for error.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are just so many things that have to go right, and it\u2019s an incredibly complex set of maneuvers that the booster has to make,\u201d Musk told reporters in a conference call shortly after Monday\u2019s flight. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of flying away from the pad, in this case at 5,000 kilometers per hour (3,000 mph) \u2026 in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to deploy the upper stage, do a U-turn, contain the propellant without centrifuging \u2026 It has to be done quite rapidly, and then restart to boost back, in this case in a ballistic arc to Cape Canaveral, which was quite a scary maneuver, and then deploy the hypersonic grid fins, maneuver through hypersonic, supersonic to subsonic, and finally light the engine for landing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around nine minutes after liftoff, just as the Falcon 9 upper stage neared orbital velocity off the U.S. East Coast, the returning first stage booster re-appeared in the skies over Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

The actuating X-wing grid fins help stabilize and guide the rocket during the trip back to Earth, along with thrust vectoring from the booster\u2019s Merlin engines. Seconds before landing, four landing legs extended from the base of the launcher.<\/p>\n

Playing out the luminous launch sequence in reverse, the first stage fired its center engine, sending off a brilliant orange flow visible for dozens of miles around. The rapidly falling rocket gradually slowed down, reaching zero velocity just as it hit the designated landing pad about six miles south of where the mission started.<\/p>\n

A rattling sonic boom reverberated across Florida\u2019s Space Coast at touchdown, giving a jolt to residents and spectators.<\/p>\n

\u201cLZ-1, the Falcon has landed,\u201d a member of the SpaceX launch team radioed over a control loop.<\/p>\n

\"An
An aerial shot of the Falcon 9 first stage on final descent. Photo credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A crowd of employees and guests gathered at SpaceX\u2019s Hawthorne, California, headquarters erupted in raucous cheers and applause, then launched into chants of \u201cUSA, USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk said he watched from a point just outside SpaceX\u2019s launch control center near the southern boundary of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sonic boom reached me about the same time as the rocket touched down, so I actually thought at first that it had exploded, but it turned out just that the sonic boom almost exactly coincided with the touchdown point, so the sound reached me several seconds later,\u201d Musk said. \u201cSo at first, I thought, \u2018Well, at least we got close.\u2019 But I went back into launch control, and there was this amazing view of the rocket still standing there on the landing zone. I can\u2019t quite believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 touchdown after Monday\u2019s blastoff came after two tries earlier this year to land the booster on an ocean-going barge in the Atlantic Ocean. A Falcon 9 first stage crashed into the ship after a launch in January after it ran out of hydraulic steering fluid, and a booster tipped over after a softer touchdown on the platform in April, when the rocket came in with lateral motion SpaceX blamed on a stuck throttle valve in one of the engines.<\/p>\n

The onshore landing target for Monday\u2019s launch was bigger than SpaceX\u2019s recovery barge, and it does not suffer from any bobbing and rocking caused by ocean waves.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has eyed rocket recoveries since the company\u2019s earliest launches a decade ago, first outfitting launchers with parachutes, then scheming to go for propulsive descents when that did not work.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s landing came less than a month after Blue Origin, another entrepreneurial space company that was founded by Amazon.com\u2019s Jeff Bezos, retrieved a smaller rocket after launching on a suborbital flight just past the 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary of space.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard booster became the first commercial vehicle to take off under its own power, fly into space and return to Earth, but its flight over Bezos\u2019 West Texas ranch was purely experimental, and it did not reach the altitude and velocity attained by SpaceX\u2019s rocket.<\/p>\n

Bezos sent a congratulatory tweet to Musk late Monday, using the message to remind readers of his company\u2019s feat last month, and repeating an argument he made to reporters in which he said the Falcon 9 and New Shepard landings are comparable because both boosters are technically suborbital.<\/p>\n