The US aerospace company SpaceX has successfully landed a resusable rocket on an ocean platform, after four previous attempts failed. Mission controllers cheered as the Falcon 9 rocket remained upright on the platform off Florida. It was returning from delivering an inflatable habitat into space for Nasa. The inflatable room will attach to the International Space Station (ISS) for a two-year test and become the first such habitat for humans in orbit. Built by Nevada company Bigelow Aerospace, the habitat is intended to pave the way towards the use of such rooms for long space trips, including to Mars.
- SpaceX is seeking to kick off a new era of reusable rockets and affordable private space travel.
- Bigelow Aerospace, the project of real estate billionaire Robert Bigelow, launched prototype expandable habitats before but none have been occupied by humans.
- Reusable rockets could revolutionize spaceflight by making costly launches more affordable, especially for public space agencies like NASA. This success may also help usher in a new era of space tourism for civilians.
Did You Know?
- Falcon 9 is a family of two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicles, named for its use of nine engines, designed and manufactured by SpaceX.
- The Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule combination won a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract from NASA in 2008 to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.
- Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportservices company with its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, USA. It was founded in 2002 by former PayPal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk with the goal of creating the technologies to reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonization of Mars.
