For the first time, SpaceX will recycle one of its flight-proven rockets for a mission to space.
The Falcon 9, which first delivered a payload to the International Space Station in April 2016, will launch a commercial satellite next week, the private space firm said, using a booster recovered from a previous flight for the first time.
“This is a Wright Brothers moment for space,” Phil Larson, a former space policy adviser to then-President Barack Obama, told the Bloomberg news service. Mr. Larson worked for SpaceX and is now at the University of Colorado. “It’s as important as the first plane taking off and landing and taking off again.”
While the launch date is expected to be March 29, it could be pushed back due to inclement weather, the technology publication Ars reported on Friday.
SpaceX, the commercial space exploration company started by PayPal founder Elon Musk, has successfully returned eight rockets, in a strategy to make space travel more economical and available for commercial audiences.
The company announced last month it is working on sending two private citizens on a trip around the moon in late 2018.
Mr. Musk, the outspoken and often candid CEO, started the company with the explicit mission to send humans to Mars.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter that he “is not” smiling over President Trump’s signing of a law this week giving NASA $19.5 billion in funding, saying that bill “changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing. Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars.”
SpaceX completed its first successful rocket re-entry and ground landing on Dec. 21, 2015.
Before that it had some spectacular failures, with its rockets and payloads exploding either on takeoff or on re-entry. In September 2016, a SpaceX rocket exploded on the launch pad and destroyed a Facebook satellite meant to bring internet connectivity to Africa.
The rocket set to launch next week will deliver the SES-10 communications satellite for SES SA, a satellite company based in Luxembourg that has partnered with SpaceX since 2013. The satellite will serve data and video communications for Latin America, from Mexico, the Caribbean, South America and Brazil, according to the company’s website.
The Falcon-9 had its first successful delivery and re-entry mission in April. Taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the rocket delivered the payload to the International Space Station. After separating from the payload, the rocket deployed counter boosters to control its re-entry to Earth. The rocket successfully landed on a drone ship off the coast of Florida.
• Laura Kelly can be reached at lkelly@washingtontimes.com.
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