SpaceX announced just days after Blue Origin completed an impressive upright rocket landing in Texas that it plans to land the next Falcon 9 rocket at NASA's Cape Canaveral facility in Florida. This will be the first time that the space flight company will land its rocket on the ground, as it has so far tried the same maneuver on floating platforms in the ocean.
The attempt to bring the rocket back on land is the latest attempt for SpaceX in a wider goal to develop a truly reusable rocket technology. It also came a week after a public spat between Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin's founder, regarding the latter's New Shepard VTOL milestone, as HNGN previously reported.
SpaceX has already successfully tested a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) with its Grasshopper rocket back in 2013. However, the spacecraft only managed a 744-meter altitude before proceeding with a successful upright landing. This involved a less harsh and realistic re-entry environment for the rocket that is coming home from space.
With the new plan to bring down a Falcon 9 rocket on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, SpaceX must endeavor to upgrade and fine tune its rocket technology. Previous landings on ocean platforms have so far failed and there could be an even greater chance of failure in landing a huge rocket on hard ground.
SpaceX will purportedly attempt the Falcon 9 landing on December 15, according to Popular Science. Construction of the landing pad is already underway at a leased site in the former Launch Complex 13, Florida Today reported. If successful, the company has already lined up a series of upgrades and inspections in order to launch the Falcon 9 rocket again. Experts state that reusable rockets is critical in space technology as it will drive down the cost of space flight.
