SpaceX’s First Reusable Rocket Is ‘Ready To Fire Again’

Over the past year, SpaceX has made multiple attempts to land its reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the sea but the efforts never came to fruition. The company later decided to land the reusable rocket on solid ground last month and the attempt proved to be successful the first time around. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has now revealed that the first reusable rocket is “ready to fire again.”

The Falcon 9 rocket went up in space last month to deliver satellites for one of SpaceX’s clients into orbit, after completing its mission the rocket landed back safely on solid ground at Cape Canaveral in Florida. For decades rockets have been falling into the Atlantic Ocean after completing their mission and they’re not used again, which is one of the reasons why it’s so costly to blast things into space.

SpaceX, and many other private space companies, are working to bring those costs down by ensuring that one rocket can be used for multiple missions. The Falcon 9 which was launched last month has been inspected and no damage was found, which means it’s ready to fire again.

Even though it’s ready to fly it doesn’t necessarily mean that SpaceX is going to send this particular rocket back up again. He said last month that the company is most likely going to keep this one on the ground since this is the first reusable rocket they have successfully landed back from space, so the decision to not launch this one again is based on emotional reasons so to speak.

It goes to show though that the Falcon 9 is capable of making multiple spaceflights and SpaceX is most likely going to prove that with another Falcon 9 in the future.

See more

Falcon 9 back in the hangar at Cape Canaveral. No damage found, ready to fire again. https://t.co/7w6IfJGtXM

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 1, 2016

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: elon musk, spacex