Credit: SpaceXĪ commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule packed with a robot assistant for the International Space Station’s crew, pouches of extra strong coffee, and a NASA science instrument designed to track the health of plants on Earth left Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Friday on a three-day pursuit of the orbiting research lab. EDT (0942 GMT) Friday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The $15 million Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, or CATS, is due to be set up on the space station's exterior later this month.SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket takes off at 5:42 a.m. One of the most important payloads is a laser remote-sensing experiment that will monitor the worldwide distribution of clouds and aerosols from orbit. The gumdrop-shaped capsule also carries experiments that will study the immune systems of fruit flies and the wound-healing capabilities of flatworms in the space environment. The Dragon shipment includes duplicates of 17 student experiments that were on the ill-fated Cygnus. Some payloads have been shifted to SpaceX's Dragon to make up for that loss. The cargo run is particularly important in the wake of October's blow-up of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket, which was supposed to send a Cygnus cargo capsule to the space station. This is SpaceX's fifth resupply mission under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA that covers 12 flights in all. "The main mission is absolutely to get cargo to the station," he said. Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, emphasized before the launch that success or failure would not be judged by whether or not the first stage is recovered. "It's like we’re back in the era of early aircraft testing - plenty more chances to get it 100 percent right at low cost, and at no cost to the taxpayer," Lurio told NBC News. Space consultant Charles Lurio, editor of The Lurio Report, said in an email that he was "gleeful" about the test's outcome "because it's wonderful that they got as far as they did in a first try." Despite the hard landing, he said Saturday's test "bodes well for the future." Musk has vowed to continue testing the landing maneuver during future Falcon 9 missions. Jon Rossįor a larger version of the graphic and a full explanation of the launch profile and its significance, check out 'The Future of Space Launch Is Near' by John Gardi and Jon Ross. An infographic by Jon Ross shows the key phases in the launch-and-landing plan for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket during Friday's space station resupply mission. Eventually, SpaceX would have rocket stages fly themselves back for touchdown on a land-based pad. SpaceX had tested elements of the maneuver during previous Falcon 9 launches by bringing the first stage down for a "soft splashdown," but this was the first attempt to have the stage land intact. No one was aboard the drone ship during the landing maneuver, due to safety concerns. But even before the launch, Musk said the chance of success was only 50-50 at most. The robotic drone ship has a 300-foot-long, 170-foot-wide landing platform - and it's designed to stabilize itself, even in heavy seas, thanks to a set of underwater thrusters. The first stage was equipped with fold-out stabilizing fins and landing legs to facilitate the maneuver. After stage separation, at an altitude of well more than 60 miles (100 kilometers), the first stage relit its rocket engines for three maneuvering burns to slow down the supersonic descent and steer the rocket to a vertical landing on the drone ship. The landing attempt came about 10 minutes after liftoff. SpaceX replaced the balky part, and Saturday's countdown went smoothly. It almost blasted off on Tuesday - but a problem with an engine-steering actuator on the rocket's second stage forced a last-minute scrub. ET from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Falcon 9 rose into a dark sky at 4:47 a.m. That would hasten Musk's dream of creating colonies on Mars and making humanity a "multiplanet species." Musk has said making rockets fully reusable could reduce the cost of getting to orbit to 1 percent of what it is today. Such a maneuver had never been tried before - and if the procedure becomes routine, it could mark a giant leap toward rocket reusability and low-cost spaceflight. ![]() ![]() actual pieces.- Elon Musk January 10, 2015 Will piece it together from telemetry and.
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