SpaceX Nails Historic At-Sea Rocket Landing

Before the dust even had time to settle from last week's Tesla Model 3 unveiling, billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk's other brainchild, SpaceX, celebrated another technological milestone. On Friday, SpaceX successfully delivered a cargo ship, carrying an experimental, balloon-like habitat, to the International Space Station and pulled off a nearly impossible at-sea landing of its rocket booster. "Fifth time's a charm!" a SpaceX webcast commentator said, as cheers erupted at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California.  (Story continues below.) The 1st stage of the Falcon 9 just landed on our Of Course I Still Love You droneship. Dragon in good orbit pic.twitter.com/SYyUCDZE3k— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 8, 2016 Onboard view of landing in high winds pic.twitter.com/FedRzjYYyQ— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 9, 2016 All four previous attempts to land the 14-story Falcon 9 rocket booster on a drone ship at sea have ended in flames. During a post-launch press conference, Musk said the successful landing is a "milestone" in the future of space flight and an exciting day for his team of 5,000 people at SpaceX. What set Friday's launch apart, he said, was that "the rocket landed instead of putting a hole in the ship, or tipping over," drawing laughter from those in attendance. Musk added it's likely the returned booster will be relaunched within a few months, following a series of test fires on the ground. In the future, he said, the hope is that reusing...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news