On Thursday, SpaceX will attempt something it has never tried before.
The Elon Musk-founded private spaceflight company will try to relaunch (and hopefully re-land) a previously flown Falcon 9 rocket booster on its second mission to deliver a satellite to orbit.
SpaceX has been working toward this moment ever since it was founded 15 years ago, and this launch will mark a huge test of its business plan, which specifically aims for reusability in order to reduce the cost of launching payloads to space.
"This launch is really what we need to see more of in order to bend the cost curve of getting hardware out of Earth's gravity well, and indeed signals a bolder, brighter future in space for all of us," Phil Larson, a former communications employee at SpaceX who is now an assistant dean at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said via email. Read more...
More about Reusable Rockets, Space Exploration, Spacex, Falcon 9, and Spaceflightvia Zero Tech Blog
