The landing was carried out on a new ground pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Base, unlike previous unsuccessful attempts to return the first stage to a vertical landing on a sea pad
SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 20 launcher early this morning (29:9 EST) for a commercial mission of transferring 11 Orbcomm communication satellites into orbit around the Earth. In addition to the successful launch of the satellites, which marks the return of SpaceX to another space the failure of the Falcon launch on June 9 this year, it was the first time in history that the first stage of a launcher was returned to an orbital path back to Israel, through a vertical landing.
Reduced shipping costs
The return of the first stage is an important milestone in the field of launching into space in general and for the SpaceX company in particular, which has been trying to do this for a long time, as part of an attempt to build a full reusable launcher, something that will significantly reduce the costs of launching into space.
Just about a month ago She succeeded Another company - Blue Origin - also returned a space launcher in a vertical landing by using the remaining fuel left in the launcher's engine after the launch, and its success was historic and the first ever to do this as part of a space launch. However, the launcher of that company was designed for a suborbital flight at an altitude of about 100 km, while the current success of SpaceX was achieved using a launcher designed for a higher orbital path, which affects the speed of the launcher, its design and location, and makes the return of the launcher very difficult More.
As mentioned, SpaceX succeeded in today's launch to return only the first stage of the launcher and not the entire launcher, which also includes an upper stage, which it is currently not trying to make multi-purpose. The landing was carried out on a new ground pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Base, unlike previous unsuccessful attempts to return the first stage to a vertical landing on a sea pad.
The launcher that was launched today is also an improved version of the Falcon 9 missile, with improved Merlin engines capable of providing more thrust as well as various safety measures that were added after the launch failure last June.
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Alon Musk defined a vision of regular trips to Mars during his lifetime. Now the industry proves that it produces space solutions no less good than NASA. We need people with such a vision. The task is enormous. But once a colony on Mars is established, even Botka, the distance to colonization in space is reduced significantly. And it is quite certain that from the technologies that will be developed for space travel it will be possible to make a fortune both in space and on earth. For example growth in difficult conditions, ion engines not only for space vehicles, water production, oxygen production and more.
Liriv and Benjamin - of course I meant "all of them" in double quotes. The technology was already possible more than 20 years ago, because if you think about the launch of the shuttle, its stabilization in the first seconds of takeoff by vector propulsion - moving the engines to the sides to correct the vertical deviation of the shuttle - is very similar to the stabilization required here upon landing. But NASA is a fixed and bureaucratic body. Free thinking of high-tech people and huge sums of money that made a serious technological effort possible made the technology possible.
Herzl
"Everything is a more sophisticated control system" sounds like "everything
A more sophisticated twin-engine fighter plane" when comparing F15 vs
ME262.
The question is how much more sophisticated.
Herzl,
If it was that simple they would have done it 20 years ago.
The whole thing is a more sophisticated control system, + opening legs, but a very significant revolution in the costs of flying into space.