Thursday, February 12, 2015

SpaceX Says Soft Landing Successful

Hawthorne-based SpaceX said yesterday that it successfully "soft" landed its first booster stage for its Falcon rocket in the ocean, landing vertically and within 10 meters of its target. The company--which scrapped plans to land the rocket stage on a platform, due to high seas--said the success in the soft landing suggests a "high probability" of landing the stage on a drone ship in the future. SpaceX's last attempt to recover its booster via a vertical landing did not fare as well, when the booster did not land in vertical position and glanced off the platform, and exploded, causing major damage. The landing is part of SpaceX's reusable rocket attempts. SpaceX successfully launched the Air Force DSCOVR space weather satellite into orbit yesterday.

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