This Friday, SpaceX has debuted a new Falcon 9 rocket model which was launched into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast. The launch was successful which means that they are one step closer to launching astronauts for NASA. The new launch vehicle is said to be easier to reuse and not as expensive as previous models.
More information about the launch
The launch took place on Kennedy’s Space Center pas 39A, where the famous Saturn % moon rocket launch also took place. The Falcon 9 rocket arched over the Atlantic Ocean and landed on SpaceX’s sea-going drone ship which is located nearly 630 kilometers east of Cape Carnival. This landing marks the 25th time when SpaceX managed to retrieve its rocket boosters completely intact.
The main objective of Friday’s mission was to deploy the Bangabandhu 1 satellite into orbit. This spacecraft is going to provide television, telecom and other services that rely on data to Bangladesh during a 15-year mission. The satellite will be parked almost 35 thousand kilometers over the equator.
Engineers will inspect the Falcon 9 rocket to see how well it performed. They want to do this in order to confirm that this rocket can be reused without it being completely broken. Yes, it is ironic that they have to take in apart in order to decide whether it will fall apart or not but this is the process of rigorous testing.
The boosters are designed to be reused ten times with minimal scheduled maintenance done on them, making them good enough to be used for 100 mission in total. If the customer demand is large enough, they could create between 30 and 50 boosters.
So, in a nutshell, the advancements done in the field of rocket research are being done at a fast rate so we are more than interested to see how the situation will evolve in the near future.
