SUCCESS. The landing of the craft 70 meters high took place less than ten minutes after taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launcher was first powered Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS), the first SpaceX cargo mission since the accident his rocket there nine months. Two and a half minutes after separation from the rest of the launcher, the first stage of Falcon 9, then to more than 100 kilometers altitude, began his descent with retro rocket engines, landing gently on a small platform sea. The firm had already tried this maneuver five times, without success so far. SpaceX had already reached in December 2015 to ask the first floor of Falcon on land after a launch, and at the first attempt.
President Barack Obama congratulated SpaceX for success in a message on Twitter: “Congratulations to SpaceX for asking a rocket at sea thanks to innovators like you and NASA as America continues to dominate space exploration.” has -he writes. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, also welcomed the success of the operation: “I think it’s a good step for the future of space flight as this will reduce costs” of launches, said he was at a press conference . “We proved that it could work” . Mr. Musk said the fuel the rocket for launch cost $ 300,000 but that the cost of production of the launcher was 60 million. “If we can recover and reuse the rapidly hundred times reduces the cost of launching” , has he said.
This first stage of Falcon 9 will undergo static tests of its engines before deciding if he can fly again, said the billionaire. If the tests are successful it could be used again in two or three months for commercial launch: “In the future, we hope that we can raise a few weeks after” , he argued. Another billionaire Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and company Blue Origin, was the first in 2015 to land her rocket “New Shepard” after a suborbital flight, considered less difficult by the experts. He repeated the feat three times.
Supplies and mouse
The Dragon capsule is in turn placed in orbit without problems Friday. It must reach the ISS at 1100 GMT Sunday to deliver 3.1 tons of supplies there, scientific equipment and an inflatable space module 1.4 tons manufactured by the American company Bigelow. It will be attached to the orbital outpost, a first. This inflatable capsule is inspired by concepts invented by NASA in the 1990s and developed by the company founded by businessman Robert Bigelow. In 2013, he concluded a contract of $ 17.8 million with NASA to build a new capsule to test these lighter space habitats.
moored to the ISS using the arm manipulator, the capsule will deploy kevlar through internal air chambers to reach four meters in length with a diameter of 3.2 meters, giving it a volume of 16 cubic meters, the size of a small room. Dragon also carries food and water for six crew members of the ISS, as well as equipment and material experiments, 20 mice. They will study muscle atrophy and bone loss in microgravity. Friday’s flight was the third for the new version of Falcon 9, designed after the accident in June 2015, the rocket has already launched satellites successfully in December and early March. This is the eighth ISS resupply mission for SpaceX, which has a contract of $ 1.6 billion with NASA.
AFP
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