SpaceX was going to try something it has never done before earlier this week. While the company has recovered many of its Falcon 9 rockets by landing them both on the ground and at sea, it hadn’t attempted to reuse one of those rockets again. It did that earlier this week and nailed it. SpaceX has been able to relaunch a previously used Falcon 9 rocket and even recover it by landing said rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
This particular rocket flew on its first mission back in April last year. It was sent up again earlier this week to deposit a customer’s satellite into orbit. The Falcon 9 rocket then made it back to Earth yet again and landed on a drone ship in the ocean.
This was an aim that SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk have been working towards for more than 15 years. The dream here is to bring the costs associated with spaceflight down and this will go a long way to ensure that the dream is converted into reality.
It took SpaceX four months to refurbish the rocket that it relaunched earlier this week. SpaceX is working to bring down the turnaround time to just one day which will be much similar to how airlines operate in the modern era.
“I’m sort of at a loss for words,” said Elon Musk, adding that “It’s really a great day, not just for SpaceX but for the space industry as a whole and proving that something could be done that many people said was impossible.”