SpaceX sticks the landing again after Falcon 9 rocket launch
SpaceX is starting to make this look (relatively) easy.
Keeping plenty of space-loving Americans up late on a Saturday night, it successfully undertook its eighth Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, around 1:30 a.m. ET.
Minutes later, Elon Musk's private spaceflight company also managed to re-land the rocket's booster intact on the "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
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The launch's payload was a Japanese commercial communications satellite called JCSAT-16 for the SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. The satellite was delivered to what's known as Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) at a height of around 36,000 kilometers, or 22,000 miles, above our planet.
The Falcon 9's booster rocket landing success follows a failed attempt in June, when the booster made it to the drone ship but did not survive. This time, although the livestream froze at the exact nail-biting moment, the booster appeared to make a perfect bullseye landing, based on still photos SpaceX released.
This is the fourth time SpaceX has landed a rocket booster at sea in 2016.
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To make it to the drone ship whole, the booster survived what SpaceX in a statement called "extreme velocities and re-entry heating."
SpaceX has also reclaimed boosters on land, but drone ship landings require less fuel, making them the best option when fuel-thirsty trips to high orbit are undertaken.
"The first stage made it successfully back from GTO, which is ticking all the boxes," one of SpaceX's livestream hosts said.
Landing the booster is integral to the company's long-term commercial plans, which include lowering the cost of space flight by reusing pricey rocket boosters. Typically, such components are discarded after each launch, with a new booster rocket used for the next one.
SpaceX has yet to reuse one of its recovered boosters, but it has indicated it will attempt to re-fly one in September or October.
If all goes to plan, SpaceX will relaunch a booster that landed on a drone ship in April, although its exact payload has yet to be announced.
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Ariel Bogle was an associate editor with Mashable in Australia covering technology. Previously, Ariel was associate editor at Future Tense in Washington DC, an editorial initiative between Slate and New America.
