SpaceX has pretty much got the skill to land a rocket on a floating barge in the bag now. For the fourth time, the private space company has landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating barge in the sea after it finished its mission and came back from space. This is the company’s sixth landing overall of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket four of which have been on the barge.
This particular landing wasn’t like the previous ones. Given the destination for its payload which was a communications satellite, the rocket had to deal with both extreme velocities as well as high heat at re-entry.
Despite all of those challenges and the inherent difficulty faced in trying to land something as complex as a rocket on a floating barge, SpaceX was able to successfully bring this Falcon 9 rocket down and secure it on the barge.
SpaceX may have landed four of its reusable Falcon 9 rockets but it’s yet to actually relaunch one of them. The company has said that it’s going to relaunch one of the rockets that have previously been saved after a successful landing later this year.
Elon Musk’s space outfit isn’t the only company that’s working on reusable rockets, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin that’s doing this as well, though his company is yet to land one of their rockets at sea.