Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX has released a video of a recent satellite-launching mission of its Falcon 9 rocket that shows the rocket successfully making a soft splashdown into the Atlantic Ocean.
Taken from a chase plane following the rocket's course to put six satellites in orbit and then return to Earth, the short video captured the rocket's re-entry and its approach to the ocean surface at a slight angle while firing its rockets to slow its rate of descent.
"Towards the end of the video, the camera operator attempted to zoom in and, unfortunately, lost sight of the stage and was unable to capture the tip-over into the water," SpaceX said in a written description accompanying the video.
The attempted soft landing after lifting commercial satellites to orbit July 14 was part of SpaceX's campaigning to create reusable rockets that can be recovered and quickly turned around for more launches.
Reusable rockets could provide access to space for one-hundredth the cost of current launch technologies, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said.
This was the third attempt to return and recover a Falcon 9, following tests in September 2013 and April of this year.
The April test, after the rocket had sent an unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule loaded with cargo to the International Space Station, saw the rocket state make a successful soft splashdown, but rough weather causing large ocean swells destroyed it before recovery vessels could reach it.
Although the three tests so far have involved water landings, the Falcon 9 booster first state is designed to touch down on land on deployable landing legs at almost zero vertical velocity, SpaceX says.
The goal is to be able to quickly prepare it for another launch without need of any significant refurbishment.
This was the second video of the July launch released by SpaceX; the first was recorded by an onboard camera and provided excellent data in advance of further tests, the company said.
"This test confirms that the Falcon 9 booster is able [to] consistently re-enter from space at hypersonic velocity, restart main engines twice, deploy landing legs and touch down at near-zero velocity," the company wrote in a July release regarding the onboard camera footage.
The Falcon 9 is a two-stage vehicle intended for satellite launches, deliveries to the International Space Station for to power future manned missions into space.
The first commercial vehicle to ever visit the ISS was a Falcon 9, launched in 2012.
