SpaceX has managed to land another Falcon 9 rocket that delivered equipment and supplies for NASA.
The rocket touched down at the land-based Landing Complex 1 — a place that the company leases at Cape Canaveral, Florida — after completing a short trip to the Earth's orbit.
This is the second time SpaceX has landed its rockets on the ground and the fifth time it has managed to recover one of its launched space-faring vehicles.
The successful landing happened only minutes after the second stage of the mission delivered the Dragon spacecraft to orbit, where it was scheduled to hook up with the International Space Station (ISS) this week.
Among other equipment and supplies, Dragon carried a critical docking adapter that will permit future crewed spacecraft to link more easily with the ISS.
"I know how critical this is for NASA and the ISS in general, and also of course for SpaceX going forward with Crew Dragon," says Hans Koenigsmann, the vice president of flight reliability at SpaceX.
Keep in mind that for this year, SpaceX has never landed its rockets on land. The company's previous six launches ended up with (mostly) successful attempts to land the returning rocket on autonomous drone ships that floated in the ocean.
The reason for this course of action is that landing on ships requires considerably less fuel than ground landings. It goes like this: as the rocket takes off and reaches high acceleration speeds at launch, it burns the fuel supplies quite rapidly. This causes the rocket to have very little fuel left when it returns to Earth, meaning that using minimal gas at landing is the sensible option. However, this particular mission's details allowed SpaceX to save fuel and have its rocket get back on land.
With the recent landing, SpaceX has completed five rocket recoveries.
The first recovery happened in December 2015, when a Falcon 9 first stage returned to Cape Canaveral after it deployed a commercial satellite. The next three recoveries took place during spring. As an endearing side-note, the robotic ship that the rockets landed on is called "Of Course I Still Love You."
The company leases a spaceport at the NASA's Kennedy Space Center to store its recovered rockets, and it keeps them all neatly grouped in a hangar at Launch Complex 39A.
However, only five Falcon 9 rockets can be loaded into the hangar at the same time. The company announced that its upcoming big rocket, Falcon Heavy, is the next spacecraft to join the Falcon family. Falcon Heavy will be assembled in the 39A hangar.
Koenigsmann explains that some rockets will have to be relocated to make room for the bigger, newer one.
"I don't know exactly what our options are; I know the team is working on that," he says.
He goes on to add that SpaceX is considering leasing an additional nearby hangar. Another possibility is that the company will simply take some of its returned rockets to its own test facility located in McGregor, Texas.
It should be mentioned that one of the reusable rockets will see orbital action in September or October.
