TORONTO – After postponing its December mission to launch cargo to the International Space Station, SpaceX is once again poised to launch Tuesday morning.
The launch is scheduled for 6:20 a.m. from Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking the fifth commercial resupply service (CRS) to the ISS by the private space company.
READ MORE: SpaceX delays space station launch until January
The weather forecast has improved to a 70 per cent chance of a go, according to NASA.
What makes this launch particularly interesting is that SpaceX plans to land the first stage of the rocket on an ocean platform.
On Monday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted a photo of the platform.
“The odds of success are not great—perhaps 50 per cent at best,” SpaceX said in a news release in December.
SpaceX has conducted two similar tests — one in Sept. 2013, which was unsuccessful, and another in July 2014 after its rocket successfully launched six Orbcomm satellites into space. That attempt was a success in that it landed, but the rocket suffered hull damage after tipping over and was lost.
This will be the first CRS mission to attempt such a landing.
Why bother landing a rocket? Musk is seeking new ways to make launches and space travel more affordable. And reusing a rocket is just one way.
“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred,” Musk has said. “A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.”
Elon Musk will be on Reddit’s Ask Me Anything, more commonly known as AMA, Monday night at 9 p.m.
Comments