SpaceX Tries to Make History By Landing Rocket on Earth

iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Sending humans to Mars is a step-by-step process, so what SpaceX will do on Tuesday morning is one more task on the to-do list to take astronauts eventually out of low Earth orbit and on to deep space.

SpaceX will up the ante on its next launch when it tries to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean platform, a tricky maneuver that has a 50-percent chance of succeeding.

The Falcon 9 rocket launching from Cape Canaveral is headed to the International Space Station with 5,000 pounds of goodies and critical supplies for the astronauts who are getting their Christmas packages better late than never.

This will be the fifth launch to the space station for the private company, which is filling in the gap for NASA with cargo deliveries that were slowed down when the Space Shuttle quit flying.

SpaceX also is in the running, along with Boeing, to get U.S. astronauts off the Russian Soyuz and back on U.S.-built spacecraft. NASA would like both companies to meet a 2017 deadline, when the current transportation contract with Russia expires.

The Falcon 9 first stage landing will be a nail-biter – it’s 14 stories tall and will be hurtling into space then back down to Earth, attempting a pinpoint landing on a floating platform. This certainly won’t be easy, but SpaceX needs to demonstrate its capability and the reusability of its rockets, and this is a spectacular way to do it.

This experiment is important to SpaceX, but the cargo is more important to NASA. The failure of Orbital’s Antares Cygnus last year, which was carrying critical cargo to the Space Station, has increased the need for the cargo Space X is now delivering.

The cargo includes critical materials for science and research, plus replacement parts for the Space Station toilet, along with personal items and fresh food for the astronauts.

When Dragon returns to Earth it will bring back experiments and trash — no curbside trash pickup on orbit!

 

Drone spaceport ship heads to its hold position in the Atlantic to prepare for a rocket landing pic.twitter.com/kXYHGVKTfE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 5, 2015

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