SpaceX Falcon 9’s vertical landing
Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX has created a major milestone in the space travel technology when its Falcon 9 rocket has lifted-off with 11 satellites and successfully landed back on Earth after putting the satellites in the target orbits.
Why the Falcon 9 launching is important?
The vertical take-off and vertical landing (VTVL) of the Falcon 9 is an important breakthrough for reusable rockets in space explorations. The reusability of the rockets will bring down the operational costs of launching a satellite to a greater extent. Many space agencies have been working for years on reusability of rockets. Elon Musk says it will reduce the cost for satellite launching by hundred times. Presently, the rockets are designed to disintegrate after deploying satellites. Their parts are brunt up when they enter atmosphere in the return journey. NowSpaceX proved that rockets can be refurbished and reused for commercial purposes. However, SpaceX has not given the details about how much part of the rocket can be reused. The present success came after two failures including the June 2015 failure in which the rocket exploded en route to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 rocket reached to a height of 200 km before its safe landing on Earth. The high altitude has made the mission very difficult.
What are the specifications of the Falcon 9?
The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket is built and designed by SpaceX to carry satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.
Height: 70 metres; Diameter: 12 feet; Thrust at sea level: 1.5 million pounds;
Thrust in vacuum: 1.7 million pounds.
How the Falcon 9 is different from its competitor Blue Origins’ New Shepard?
Before Falcon 9, the Blue Origin space company of Jeff Bezos has launched New Shepard in November, 2015. It was successfully land back on Earth. When compared to New Shepard, Falcon 9 is bigger and more powerful. It can carry much heavier payloads. Falcon 9 uses Merlin engines in the first stage and they are more powerful than the BE-3 engine used in the New Shepard. Falcon 9 primarily used to carry payloads whereas New Shepard is meant for taking space tourists to the edge of the earth and experience weightlessness. Falcon 9 can carry payloads much deeper altitudes to a range of 200 kms.
What’s next?
The Falcon 9 will not be reused for launching payloads. However, SpaceX plans to launch rockets in 2016 that can be reused. SpaceX needs to see how much time it will take for refurbishment of recovered rockets and get them to fly again.
