SpaceX lands Falcon 9 rocket at sea again, despite much harsher conditions

Saying "there's no way I can pull this off" to lower expectations is the oldest trick in the book, but SpaceX just used it masterfully. The company managed to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea for the second time, despite previously saying a successful landing was "unlikely."

This is due to the rocket's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere being much faster (and, thus, hotter) than on the first successful attempt in April. 

The Falcon 9, which was launched at 1:21 a.m. ET Friday, carried a Japanese communications satellite called JCSAT-14 into Earth's orbit. That part of the mission was also a success, with the second stage of Falcon 9 delivering JCSAT-14 into orbit about an hour after launch. 

Prior to the landing, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the odds of making a successful landing are "maybe even." 

All in all, this is the sixth attempt by SpaceX to land the Falcon 9 on a drone ship in the ocean, the last two of which were successful. The landings are important as they give SpaceX the opportunity to reuse the Falcon 9 rockets, significantly reducing the cost of launching to space. 

On Twitter, Musk drops a hint on why this mission might be even more important than the first successful drone landing. 

This means that the rocket can safely slow down very quickly after a fast entry into the atmosphere. Though Musk does not explicitly mention this, the ability to slow down a spacecraft quickly would come in handy in a Mars landing, which is problematic as the planet's thin atmosphere would do a bad job slowing a spaceship down during a landing attempt. 

In April, Musk tweeted that the company plans to send its Red Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2018. Unlike earlier Mars landing missions, Red Dragon is designed to land without a parachute, instead using SpaceX's SuperDraco thrusters to slow the craft down during landing. 

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