The Falcon Has Landed: SpaceX Recap of Falcon 9 Landing

Yesterday SpaceX posted this cool video recapping their successful landing of the "full thrust" Falcon 9 rocket following the launch of 11 Orbcomm 2 satellites.

The next Falcon 9 launch is currently scheduled for January 17th from Vandenberg AFB California. It's an older "v1.1" Falcon 9 and it will attempt to land on a barge in the Pacific following launch. So far all attempts to land the rocket on a barge have failed. Future launches with the upgraded "full thrust" Falcon 9 will attempt to repeat their December 21st feat of landing back at Cape Canaveral. The next Falcon 9 launch from Canaveral is tentatively the SES 9 launch scheduled for February 6th, 2016 and due to fuel requirements will also be an ocean landing, though I expect we will see land based landings later this year as well.
[link to spaceflightnow.com (secure)]

The first test flight of the Falcon Heavy from Pad 39A (formerly used for Apollo and Shuttle flights) is tentatively scheduled for April, followed by another Falcon Heavy test flight in October. Falcon Heavy is essentially going to be equivalent to about 3 Falcon 9 rockets strapped together.


Perhaps most importantly for the US, the first test flight of the manned version of the Dragon capsule is currently scheduled for December of this year, also from Pad 39A. This will be an unmanned flight to the space station to prove the system works. Crewed flights could start as early as 2017 and end US dependence on Russian Soyuz vehicles to access the space station. SpaceX is pushing hard to try to beat Boeing to be the first to launch the first manned orbital flight from US soil since the final flight of the space shuttle, STS-135.


Last Edited by Astromut on 01/13/2016 07:19 PM