Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Rocket landing at sea marks success for SpaceX

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: April 9, 2016 at 9:47:41 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Rocket landing at sea marks success for SpaceX

April 8, 2016
RELEASE 16-043
NASA Cargo Headed to Space Station Includes Habitat Prototype, Medical Research
Credits: NASA TV
Credits: NASA TV
Tucked in the trunk of the latest commercial cargo spacecraft to head for the International Space Station is an expandable structure that has the potential to revolutionize work and life on the space station.
SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is delivering almost 7,000 pounds of cargo, including the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), to the orbital laboratory following its launch on a Falcon 9 rocket at 4:43 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The mission is SpaceX's eighth cargo delivery through NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract. Dragon's cargo will support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations taking place on the space station during Expeditions 47 and 48.
"The cargo will allow investigators to use microgravity conditions to test the viability of expandable space habitats, assess the impact of antibodies on muscle wasting, use protein crystal growth to aid the design of new disease-fighting drugs and investigate how microbes could affect the health of the crew and their equipment over a long duration mission," said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman.
Dragon will be grappled at 7 a.m. Sunday, April 10, by ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Tim Peake, using the station's Candarm2 robotic arm, with help from NASA astronaut Jeff Williams.
BEAM will arrive in Dragon's unpressurized trunk and, after about five days, will be removed and attached to the station. Expansion is targeted for the end of May. The module will expand to roughly 10 feet in diameter and 13 feet long. During its two-year test mission, astronauts will enter the module for a few hours several times a year to retrieve sensor data and assess conditions. Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a rocket, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. This first in situ test of the module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat protects against solar radiation, space debris and contamination.
Crew members experience significant decreases in bone density and muscle mass during long-duration spaceflight without appropriate nutrition and exercise. One life science investigation on its way to the orbiting laboratory will assess myostatin inhibition as a means of preventing skeletal muscle atrophy and weakness in mice exposed to long-duration spaceflight. Drugs tested on the space station could progress to human clinical trials back on Earth to validate their effectiveness for future space missions.
Dragon also will deliver Microchannel Diffusion, a study of fluids at the nanoscale, or atomic, level. Nanofluidic sensors could measure the air in the space station, or be used to deliver drugs to specific places in the body. The laws that govern flow through nanoscale channels are not well understood, and this investigation simulates those interactions by studying them at the larger microscopic level. This type of research is possible only on the space station, where Earth's gravity is not strong enough to interact with the molecules in a sample, so they behave more like they would at the nanoscale. Knowledge gleaned from the investigation may have implications for drug delivery and particle filtration, as well as future technological applications for space exploration.
Another experiment onboard Dragon is a protein crystal growth investigation focused on drug design and development. Growing protein crystals in microgravity can help researchers avoid some of the obstacles inherent to protein crystallization on Earth, such as sedimentation. One investigation will study the effect of microgravity on the co-crystallization of a membrane protein to determine its three-dimensional structure. This will enable scientists to chemically target and inhibit, with "designer" compounds, an important human biological pathway thought to be responsible for several types of cancer.
The spacecraft is scheduled to depart the space station May 11 for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, west of Baja California, bringing almost 3,500 pounds of science, hardware and spacewalking tools back to Earth for further study, including biological samples from NASA's one-year mission.
The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has been continuously occupied since November 2000. In that time, it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
For more information about SpaceX's mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/spacex
For more information about the International Space Station, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station
-end-
Tabatha Thompson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
tabatha.t.thompson@nasa.gov
Dan Huot
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
daniel.g.huot@nasa.gov
Last Updated: April 8, 2016
Editor: Karen Northon

SpaceX delivers inflatable room, supplies to space station
The delivery is the first from SpaceX in nine months, since a rocket exploded last year two minutes after takeoff.
By Stephen Feller | April 8, 2016 at 2:55 PM

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 8 (UPI) -- This afternoon SpaceX is scheduled to launch its first delivery mission to the International Space Station in nine months, after an explosion aboard a Falcon 9 rocket destroyed it moments after liftoff.
In addition to replacing projects that never made it to the station last year, the Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for liftoff at 4:43 P.M. EDT will bring to the International Space Station an inflatable living space being tested for future missions and other supplies aboard a Dragon space capsule.
The launch of the rocket will be streamed live at the SpaceX website and on NASA TV.
SpaceX will also attempt to land the Falcon 9 rocket, after it completes its burn, sending the Dragon into space, and starts its journey back to Earth. It will be the company's fifth attempt to successfully land the rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. In December it successfully landed a rock on land, but the drone ship has been a challenge.
On Sunday, crew members of the International Space Station will use the station's robotic arm to capture the Dragon and attach it to the station, where it will stay for about a month.
"It's really important to have a very regular supply chain," Kirk Shireman, NASA's manager for the space station program, said of the capsule packed with experiments and supplies during a news conference.
Packed aboard the Dragon is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or Beam, an experimental living space designed by Bigelow Aerospace, which company owner Robert Bigelow says he hopes will lead to rentable space in the near future.
The Beam, made of Kevlar and other strong fabrics, will take about a day to inflate and over the course of the next year, will be entered several times by astronauts, wearing their regular clothes, who will take measurements and check how the giant bubble is holding up in space.
"These expandable modules take up less room on a rocket, but once set up, provide more volume for living and working in space," NASA wrote in a blog post about the Beam. "When we're traveling to Mars or beyond, astronauts need habitats that are both durable and easy to transport and to set up. That's where expandable technology comes in."
https://youtu.be/gFZXl45N0m8
Other experiments arriving on the Dragon will help scientists study muscle atrophy and bone loss in space, use microgravity to understand nanoscale particle flows, and utilize protein crystal growth in microgravity to help design pharmaceuticals, NASA said.
The SpaceX flight resumes regularly scheduled supply flights to the station after a two-foot-long strut in a liquid oxygen tank failed causing a series of explosions.
That strut was completely redesigned, and SpaceX officials are hoping to stick its first at-sea landing since starting the launches. With a goal of manned spaceflights planned to start sometime in 2017, the company said it at least expects an increase in flight frequency over the next several months.
"The time between missions will get shorter and shorter," said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability, who told CNBC biweekly launches should be expected "by the end of this year."

Rocket landing at sea marks success for SpaceX
By Marilyn Malara | April 9, 2016 at 2:29 PM

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 9 (UPI) -- SpaceX successfully completed a rocket landing on a drone ship off the coast of Florida, marking the first such successful landing for the company.
The Falcon 9 first stage rocket touched down on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You without incident Friday as it floated on the Atlantic Ocean.
The sea landing marked the fifth attempt by SpaceX while delivering supplies to the International Space Station, according to reports. Friday's delivery involved the Dragon spacecraft; the mission was titled CRS-8.
"It's another step toward the stars. In order for us to really open up access to space we have to have full and rapid reusability," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press conference.
Late last year, SpaceX successfully landed a first-stage booster rocket on solid ground in Cape Canaveral after years of development.
The company's goal, alongside other comparable companies including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, is to make reuse of both manned an unmanned rockets for space travel "easy" and more affordable. Earlier this month, Blue Origin successfully landed the same booster rocket for the third time.
Musk said he'll feel as if he has struck true success "when it becomes boring, when it's like, 'another landing, no news there.'"
SpaceX reportedly plans to reuse Friday's rocket as early as June.
https://youtu.be/sYmQQn_ZSys
© 2016 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Barge landing video:
http://www.floridatoday.com/videos/tech/science/space/2016/04/08/82809286/

SpaceX launches Dragon, lands Falcon 9 booster on ship
James Dean, FLORIDA TODAY 3:54 p.m. EDT April 9, 2016

SpaceX successfully launched a Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral and return a Falcon 9 first stage to a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Video by Emre Kelly. Posted April 8, 2016. Wochit
The first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket sits on the autonomous ship in the Atlantic Ocean after the first at-sea landing on Friday, April 8, 2016.(Photo: SpaceX)
SpaceX hopes to see two vehicles berth at their destinations Sunday: a Dragon capsule at the International Space Station, and the booster that launched it at Port Canaveral.
Completing a perfect launch Friday, SpaceX returned the Dragon to flight nine months after one was lost in a launch failure, and stuck its first landing of a Falcon 9 booster on a ship at sea.
The Dragon's flight with nearly 7,000 pounds of supplies and experiments, including an important prototype module, restored confidence SpaceX can deliver critical supplies to the station and its six-person crew.
Incredible footage released by SpaceX shows a Falcon 9 rocket's booster stage landing on an autonomous ship in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time on Friday, April 8, 2016.
And the dramatic booster landing, following one on land at Cape Canaveral in December, advanced SpaceX's bigger ambitions to slash launch costs by reusing rockets.
"It's another step towards the stars," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said of the landing. "To really open up access to space, we've got to achieve full and rapid reusability, and being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to be a huge impact on cost."
The Falcon 9 and Dragon blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into clear skies at 4:43 p.m.
About 10 minutes later, video showed the rocket's 14-story first stage dropping back to Earth, re-lighting a Merlin engine to brake its speed and touching down on a "drone ship" roughly 200 miles down range.
Unlike at least four previous tries at sea landings, "the rocket landed instead of putting a hole in the ship, or tipping over, so we're really excited about that," said Musk.
The achievement even earned a congratulatory tweet from President Obama: "Congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea," he said.
It helped that seas were calm and the overall weather very good, but Musk said the stage tilted through winds as stiff as 50 mph.
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Crews were expected to board the ship SpaceX calls the "Of Course I Still Love You" (a reference to Iain Banks novels), place steel shoes over the stage's four landing legs and weld them to the deck to keep the rocket upright.
Musk said the ship was expected to return to port Sunday, where a crane would remove the stage for transportation to facilities at the Cape or Kennedy Space Center. The booster will be inspected thoroughly, and its nine engines test-fired multiple times in the coming weeks.
If deemed flight-worthy, the rocket will be the first SpaceX launches for a second time, possibly as soon as June, and possibly with a paying customer along for the ride.
That would be a first in orbital rocketry. Blue Origin, the company backed by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, last week launched and landed its smaller, suborbital New Shepard booster for a third time in West Texas.
Meanwhile, SpaceX on Friday reported that the Dragon reached a good orbit and was on track for a rendezvous with the ISS around 7 a.m. Sunday — its first visit to the station in a year.
"We're very excited to have our cargo and the Dragon safely on orbit," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's space station program manager.
British astronaut Tim Peake will use the station's 58-foot robotic arm to grapple the capsule as it floats nearby, before it is attached to a port and hatches are opened Monday.
By the end of next week, the same robotic arm is expected to remove a prototype habitat designed by Bigelow Aerospace from the Dragon's unpressurized "trunk" and install it at a port.
In late May, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will be inflated to its full size, about 13 feet long and 10 feet around, and more than four times its packed volume.
Congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea. It's because of innovators like you & NASA that America continues to lead in space exploration.
— President Obama (@POTUS) April 8, 2016
The "expandable" technology is seen as key to commercial space stations that could eventually replace the ISS, and potentially to deep space habitats.
SpaceX is targeting its next Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral, and its next attempted landing at sea, before the end of this month. That landing will be more difficult, since the rocket will fly at higher speed to put a communications satellite in a much higher orbit.
But Musk is confident that over a few years, SpaceX will get good enough to re-launch rockets within weeks, needing to do little more than hose them down and refuel them.
"Like an aircraft," he said. "We've got to ultimately get rockets to that point."
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.

Copyright © 2016 www.floridatoday.com. All rights reserved.

William Harwood CBS News April 8, 2016, 6:02 PM
SpaceX launches cargo ship to orbit, sticks ocean landing
Last Updated Apr 8, 2016 8:50 PM EDT

An upgraded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rocket boosted a Dragon cargo ship into orbit Friday, kicking off a two-day flight to the International Space Station to deliver 3.5 tons of cargo, including an innovative inflatable module that could pave the way to future deep space habitats and commercial space stations.
And in a notable first for the California rocket company, the booster's first stage flew itself to a picture-perfect touchdown on an off-shore barge, whimsically named the "Of Course I Still Love You," stationed about 185 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral.
Video from a company aircraft showed the 156-foot-tall stage descending vertically on the power of a single rocket engine and sticking the landing just a few feet from the center of the drone ship's deck, stable on its splayed landing legs as the ship rocked in slightly choppy seas.
"'Of Course I Still Love You,' we have a Falcon 9 on board," a SpaceX engineer triumphantly radioed about eight minutes and 35 seconds after launch.
It was the latest in a series of dramatic tests to perfect re-entry and landing techniques so spent rocket stages can be routinely recovered, refurbished and relaunched, a key element in SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's drive to lower the cost of spaceflight.
"I think this was a really good milestone for the future of spaceflight, I think it's another step toward the stars," Musk told reporters after the landing. "In order for us to really open up access to space, we've got to achieve full and rapid reusability.
"Being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to be a huge impact on costs," he said. "It'll obviously take us a few years to make that smooth and make it efficient, but I think it's proven that it can work."
SpaceX successfully landed a booster stage at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last December, but Friday's touchdown was the first on an off-shore barge after several near misses. The eventual payoff, Musk said, will be dramatically lower launch costs.
"The cost to refuel our rocket, it's mostly oxygen on board, is only $200,000 to $300,000, but the cost of the rocket is $60 million," he said. "Fully and rapidly reused, it's somewhere on the order of a hundred-fold cost reduction. You still have your fixed costs, but in marginal costs it's a hundred-fold reduction."
But the landing, however successful, was a strictly secondary objective. The primary goal of the company's eighth operational space station resupply flight is delivery of some 7,000 pounds of cargo and equipment to the lab complex.
The mission began when the Falcon 9s nine first-stage engines roared to life at 4:43 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), generating 1.5 million pounds of sea-level thrust and a ground-shaking roar as they pushed the 213-foot-tall rocket away from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Climbing directly into the plane of the space station's orbit, the Falcon 9 put on a spectacular afternoon sky show, trailing a brilliant jet of fiery exhaust as it smoothly accelerated away to the northeast to kick off a two-day rendezvous.
The first stage boosted the rocket out of the lower atmosphere, shutting down and falling away about two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. The single Merlin 1D engine powering the Falcon 9's second stage then ignited to continue the climb to orbit.
A closeup of the Falcon 9 first stage, safely down on the SpaceX landing barge.
SpaceX
The first stage, meanwhile, flipped around and restarted three of its engines to slow down and head back toward Florida. Another rocket firing slowed the craft still more for re-entry with a final "burn" to set down on the deck of the drone ship.
Company officials opted for a barge landing attempt Friday because of the relatively heavy weight of the loaded Dragon capsule and to gain more experience with off-shore recoveries. More than half of SpaceX's launchings overall will involve heavy payloads, making barge landings the only viable option for recovery.
And this time around, it worked like a charm. After draining residual propellants and welding the rocket's landing feet to the deck, the SpaceX drone ship will haul the booster back to Port Canaveral for off-loading and detailed post-flight inspections.
Musk said he hopes to re-launch the refurbished stage in the next few months to demonstrate its reusability. He did not identify the payload.
"We're going to do a series of test fires, we're hoping to do that at the Cape," Musk said. "Our thought is to fire it 10 times in a row on the ground and if things look good at that point, we feel it's qualified for reuse and launch. We're hoping to relaunch on an orbital mission probably around May or June. So pretty soon."
President Obama tweeted "congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea. It's because of innovators like you & NASA that America continues to lead in space exploration."
Tweeted former space shuttle flight director and program manager Wayne Hale: "And they said it couldn't be done (at least no one has ever done it) until, of course, you did it."
While the first stage was flying back to Earth, the Falcon 9 second stage chalked up a flawless flight of its own, shutting down as planned 10 minutes after launch. The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship then separated to continue the station chase on its own, followed a few minutes later by deployment of its solar arrays.
If all goes well, the Dragon will pull up to within about 30 feet of the space station early Sunday and then stand by while British astronaut Timothy Peake, operating the lab's robot arm, locks onto a grapple fixture. Flight controllers in Houston then plan to take over arm operations, pulling the Dragon in to a berthing at the forward Harmony module's Earth-facing port.
The Dragon will be the third cargo ship to arrive at the space station in just 15 days, a record for the lab project, following the berthing of an Orbital ATK Cygnus supply ship March 26 and a Russian Progress freighter on April 2. Altogether, more than 12 tons of cargo and supplies will have reached the lab in a little more than two weeks.
The Dragon is loaded with 1,410 pounds of science gear, 1,205 pounds of crew supplies, 674 pounds of station hardware, 26 pounds of spacewalk equipment, 238 pounds of computer gear and 72 pounds of Russian equipment.
Also on board: 20 mice that are part of an Eli Lilly experiment to learn more about muscle atrophy and bone loss in space. Other experiments are focused on plant growth, fungi in space, the growth of microbes on the station and student research on genetics and immune system changes in orbit.
A wide variety of other research also is on board, along with 25 student experiments to replace those lost in the June launch failure.
The Falcon 9 blasts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
SpaceX
Equally important to NASA, the Dragon will bring back biological samples that have been stored aboard the station when the supply ship returns to Earth around May 11, including blood and saliva samples collected from Scott Kelly during his nearly one-year stay in orbit.
But the clear centerpiece of the Dragon's cargo is the 3,100-pound Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, a collapsed compartment that will be pulled out of the Dragon's lower unpressurized trunk section and attached to the station's Tranquility module on April 16.
Around May 26, the module will be inflated, or "expanded," using station air and internal tanks, pressurized to match the lab's cabin atmosphere. Fully expanded, BEAM will measure 13 feet long and 10.5 feet wide. Internal volume will be about 565 cubic feet, or about the size of a small bedroom. It is not equipped with lights or any other crew amenities.
During a two-year test period, sensors will record temperature, pressure and radiation levels to characterize the module's performance. Because the technology is untried, station astronauts will leave the BEAM hatch closed most of the time, entering a few times each year to download recorded sensor data. At the end of its test period, the compartment will be detached to burn up in the atmosphere.
"We want to understand the structural integrity, the radiation performance of (the module) and the temperature controls in order to help inform our choices for deep space habitats," said Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division. "So we're going to do that over these two years."
Expandable modules offer a significant advantage over traditional solid-body compartments, taking up much less room atop a launch vehicle and allowing much roomier, lighter-weight modules to be launched than could otherwise be accommodated atop current rockets.
Billionaire Robert Bigelow, whose company Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas built the BEAM expandable under a $17.8 million contract with NASA, sees his module as a stepping stone to the future, an attempt to prove the technology works as advertised in the real-world space environment.
Bigelow hopes to launch much larger compartments with three times the volume of a typical station module around the end of the decade to form the core of a commercial space station. Similar modules may prove attractive to NASA as habitats for astronauts heading to Mars or other deep space destinations.
"We would operate these on behalf of nations that have astronaut corps and others that aspire to have them," Bigelow said Thursday. "Right now, the frequency of the opportunity to fly is not often. Other than for the United States and Russia, it's about once every three years. Some countries, maybe never, or very, very seldom. So there is a substantial appetite out there we've discovered, and so we think that's a market."
He said corporations, university researchers and users from other nations are "absolutely mainstream in our thinking, we would very much want to house those folks."
The value of a commercial space station is "a combination of everything, from what you could manufacture product-wise and send down, it could be information you're sending down," he said. "It can change the image of a country overnight to have that kind of facility. ... Naturally, NASA could be a very important customer to that kind of an industry."
As for transportation to and from his proposed space station, Bigelow showed a graphic with commercial crew ferry ships now being built by Boeing and SpaceX docked at the outpost.
NASA began development of an expandable module known as Transhab in the 1990s. But funding eventually was cut off and Bigelow Aerospace took over the technology. The company launched two small expandables on Russian rockets, but BEAM will be the first involving interaction with astronauts in space.
A computer graphic showing the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, attached to the space station's Tranquility module after inflation.
Bigelow Aerospace
"It is the future," said Kirk Shireman, manager of the International Space Station program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Humans will be using these kinds of modules as we move farther and farther off the planet and as we inhabit low-Earth orbit. So I think it really is the next logical step in humans getting off the planet."
Given the ever-present threat of impacts with space debris micrometeoroids, an inflatable "soft goods" module with fabric walls might seem counterintuitive. But BEAM meets or exceeds space station shielding requirements, making the module as tough or tougher than traditional solid-body compartments.
"There's a reason bullet-proof vests are made out of soft goods, not rigid materials, and it's a strength of materials and stopping power," said Crusan.
And the compartment features an internal framework. Even if a puncture occurred, the module would not collapse and it would be relatively easy to repair.
"I'm afraid I can't share too much because it's proprietary," a company engineer said of the fabric making up the module's skin. "It's a Vectran-like material that creates the outer structure, it's a load bearing structure, and it's covered by MMOD (micrometeoroid) shield protection. That's also our own proprietary materials, but it's been proven to perform up to the standards of ISS, and we look forward to demonstrating that."
Friday's launching was the 23rd of a Falcon 9 rocket since the booster debuted in 2010, the third flight in four months of an upgraded, more powerful version of the booster and the fourth since a catastrophic second stage failure last June that destroyed the previous station-bound Dragon cargo ship.
After replacing suspect internal struts and implementing the planned upgrades, SpaceX successfully launched two commercial satellite missions in December and March and a NASA science satellite in February, using a less-powerful version of the rocket, to clear the way for Friday's resumption of station delivery missions.

© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SpaceX lands rocket on ocean-going drone ship
April 8, 2016 Stephen Clark
A split-screen view during SpaceX's launch webcast showed the Falcon 9 first stage booster after touchdown on the drone ship, while the Dragon cargo capsule is deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage in orbit. Credit: SpaceX
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster descended under engine power to a floating landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, notching the first-ever rocket landing at sea minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral with a supply ship hauling 3.5 tons of cargo to the International Space Station.
The dramatic landing, broadcast live by SpaceX and NASA, is the latest achievement for the commercial space transportation company led by Elon Musk, who aims to make rocket launches less expensive to enable his vision of affordable human missions to Mars.
It was the fifth time SpaceX has tried to recover a spent Falcon 9 first stage on an ocean-going ship. The previous four tries were unsuccessful, with the rocket coming down too fast or tipping over after touchdown.
Friday's landing hit the mark, with the rocket settling down on four landing legs aboard the landing platform named "Of Course I Still Love You."
"'Of Course I Still Love You,' we have a Falcon 9 on-board," a SpaceX engineer announced on the flight radio loop.
Touchdown occurred about 8 minutes, 35 seconds, after the Falcon 9 blasted off from Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad at 4:43:31 p.m. EDT (2043:31 GMT) with a commercial Dragon cargo capsule heading for the space station.
The first stage came back to Earth with a sequence of three rocket burns — the first two with three engines, then with one engine — as the Falcon 9's second stage accelerated into orbit with the Dragon spacecraft.
A split-screen video feed provided by SpaceX followed the independent rocket flights at the same time, showing the first stage touching down as the Dragon spaceship soared nearly 150 miles over the Atlantic Ocean in orbit.
The landing barge used underwater engines to precisely hold position about 185 miles (300 kilometers) northeast of Cape Canaveral. Periodic waves gave the platform a tilt of up to 2 or 3 degrees, and the rocket battled stiff winds on final approach to the ship, officials said.
SpaceX has recovered one of its rockets before. In December, a Falcon 9 booster stage returned to a landing zone at Cape Canaveral a few miles from its launch pad.
Friday's successful descent to the landing platform, dubbed a drone ship by SpaceX, was the first time a space launcher returned to Earth at sea.
The achievement is important because SpaceX hopes to reuse Falcon 9 first stage boosters to reduce the cost of space transportation, and launches carrying heavy payloads to high-altitude orbits are going too fast and need too much fuel for the rockets to turn around and head back for land.
Rockets on those missions — accounting about half of the Falcon 9's future manifest — must arc downrange from the launch site and target landings hundreds of miles away.
"I think it's another step towards the stars," Musk said after Friday's launch and landing. "In order for us to really open up access to space, we've got to achieve full and rapid reusability, and being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to be a huge impact on cost."
Landing the rocket at sea is easier on the first stage's fuel margins, but it is technically more daunting than steering back toward shore.
"It's sort of like an (aircraft) carrier landing vs. a land landing," Musk said. "It's a tinier spot, and it's moving."
Onboard view of landing in high winds pic.twitter.com/FedRzjYYyQ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 9, 2016
SpaceX technicians stationed on a boat near the drone ship planned to weld steel shoes over the rocket's four carbon fiber and aluminum landing legs to keep the 156-foot-tall stage from tipping over.
The recovery crew will safe the rocket, drain it of hazardous fluids and gases, and set course for Port Canaveral, the drone ship's home base. Musk said the vessel is due to arrive some time Sunday.
Once it is back in port, ground teams will retract the booster's landing legs, rotate it horizontal and drive it to a SpaceX facility at nearby Cape Canaveral — likely launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center — for hotfire tests, Musk said.
"Our plan is to basically fire it 10 times in a row on the ground," Musk said. "If things look good at that point, then it's qualified for reuse and launch. We're hoping to re-launch on an orbital mission probably around … June."
The first stage recovered by SpaceX in December is set to go on display outside the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, later this year, Musk said.
Musk said he expects the launch of the previously-flown booster will have a paying customer, but he declined to identify which client might put their payload on the rocket.
SpaceX and satellite industry officials have said a demonstration launch is not required if the used rocket stage is proven flight-ready in ground tests.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said last month the company plans to discount flights with previously-flown first stage boosters by up to 30 percent — equivalent to approximately $40 million compared to the Falcon 9's current commercial price of $61.2 million.
That's with a new second stage and payload fairing on each flight.
SpaceX is working on recovering the Falcon 9's clamshell-like nose cone after launches. If achieved, that would offer savings on the order of several million dollars, according to Musk.
There is no near-term plan to get the Falcon 9's upper stage back. That piece enters orbit on each launch and would need a cumbersome heat shield to survive the journey back into Earth's atmosphere at a velocity of 5 miles per second.
The reuse emphasis now is on recovering the Falcon 9's first stage, and the strap-on boosters aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, which is set to debut at the end of this year.
The Falcon Heavy is made of three Falcon 9 first stage cores bolted together, giving the behemoth launcher 27 Merlin engines to power it off the ground.
"It'll still take us a few years to make (landings) smooth and make it efficient, but I think it's proven that it can work," Musk said. "There probably will be some failures in the future, but we'll iron those out and get to the point where it's routine to bring it back, and where the only change to the rocket is to maybe hose it down and clean it, give it a wash, and add the propellant and fly again."
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad at 4:43 p.m. EDT (2043 GMT). Credit: SpaceX
President Obama congratulated SpaceX on the landing in a tweet: "Congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea. It's because of innovators like you & NASA that America continues to lead in space exploration."
SpaceX's path to landing its rocket components has been rocky, marred by unsuccessful bids to get boosters back via parachute before a switch to the powered descent recovery mode. Musk's company also got into a patent dispute with Blue Origin, a rival commercial space firm established by Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, over the barge landing scheme.
Wayne Hale, a respected former NASA space shuttle program manager and now an aerospace industry consultant, noted the widespread skepticism often given SpaceX since the reusability plan went public: "And they said it couldn't be done (at least no one has ever done it) until, of course, you did it."
Dragon on track for space station
As for the prime purpose of Friday's launch, the Dragon cargo craft set off on a one-and-a-half day pursuit of the space station after its deploying from the Falcon 9's second stage.
The gumdrop-shaped capsule deployed from the rocket about 10 minutes after liftoff — moments after the first stage landing — and the Dragon's two power-generating solar panels unfurled to a span of 54 feet (16.5 meters).
Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of flight reliability, told reporters Friday night that the capsule is in good health. A door covering the spacecraft's grapple fixture and navigation sensors opened up a few hours after launch in one of the supply mission's early milestones.
"We're very excited to have our cargo, and the Dragon, safely on orbit, and we're very much looking forward to it arriving to the ISS," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's space station program manager.
A tightly-choreographed flight plan Saturday calls for several firings of the ship's thrusters to adjust its orbit and approach the space station.
The cargo freighter, packed with 6,913 pounds (3,136 kilograms) of equipment, will complete a laser-guided final rendezvous with the research complex, approaching from underneath in the predawn hours Sunday, U.S. time.
European Space Agency flight engineer Tim Peake will take control of the space station's 58-foot-long robotic arm to grapple the Dragon spacecraft around 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT).
The robot arm will maneuver the capsule to an attach point on the Harmony module a few hours later, where it will stay until May 11.
The mission is SpaceX's eighth of at least 26 operational supply deliveries to the space station, and the company's first visit to the complex in a year after a launch failure grounded the Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA has also contracted with Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada Corp. for space station cargo services, sharing the load with Russian and Japanese logistics carriers.
Stowed inside the Dragon capsule's unpressurized trunk is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, a soft-sided room built to demonstrate inflatable habitats for commercial space stations and long-distance deep space voyages.
The International Space Station's robotic arm will pluck BEAM from Dragon's external cargo carrier April 16 and place it on a berthing port on the outpost's Tranquility module.
The module is tightly packed for launch, but it will extend and balloon open to a volume of 565 cubic feet (16 cubic meters) — four times its current size — around May 26 after several weeks of thermal stabilization.
Developed by Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace under a $17.8 million contract with NASA, the structure will spend two years on the space station to test its resilience to the harsh temperature swings of low Earth orbit and impacts by micrometeoroids and space debris.
Astronauts will enter the module to install sensors and periodically retrieve data cards for analysis by engineers on the ground.
Artist's concept of the BEAM structure attached to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
The station crew will unpack nearly 3,800 pounds (1,723 kilograms) of supplies, provisions and experiments inside Dragon's internal compartment.
The spaceship's cargo manifest includes:
BEAM — 3,115 pounds (1,413 kilograms)
Science Investigations — 1,410 pounds (640 kilograms)
Crew Supplies — 1,205 pounds (547 kilograms)
Vehicle Hardware — 674 pounds (306 kilograms)
Spacewalk Equipment — 26 pounds (12 kilograms)
Computer Resources — 238 pounds (108 kilograms)
Russian Hardware — 72 pounds (33 kilograms)
The experiments aboard Dragon include 20 female mice for an experiment developed by Eli Lilly, the Indiana-based pharmaceutical firm, to investigate how an antibody made in the company's laboratories might inhibit muscle loss.
"This experiment has implications for spaceflight and longer-term space missions, but for us, the interest is because of patients on Earth who have muscle-wasting diseases," said Rosamund Smith, Eli Lilly's principal investigator for the muscle atrophy experiment. "This can be things ranging from ALS, muscular dystrophy, some types of cancer and even the frail elderly undergo muscle-wasting, and there are many similarities between the muscle-wasting that occurs on Earth in those disaseaes and that (which) occurs in space."
Astronauts will help collect data on the function of the mice's muscles, then euthanize the specimens and prepare tissue samples for return to Earth aboard the Dragon spacecraft when it comes home.
The returning Dragon will also come back with blood and urine samples collected from astronaut Scott Kelly, who completed a nearly year-long expedition on the space station in early March. The samples have waited for SpaceX's supply ship to arrive because Dragon is the only spacecraft capable of bringing significant cargo from the space station back to Earth.
NASA hopes to study how the 340-day mission affected Kelly's physiology in preparation for even longer voyages to Mars.
Dragon will parachute to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 11.
SpaceX's next launch is scheduled for around April 28 with Japan's JCSAT 14 television broadcasting satellite.

© 2016 Spaceflight Now Inc.

SpaceX Rocket Landing At Sea Captured By On-Board Camera, Chase Plane | Video
Saturday, April 9, 2016 05:40
On April 8th, 2016, Space landed its Falcon 9 first stage on an ocean barge for the first time. A camera mounted to the rocket captured the landing along with a chase plane. The same hardware launched the Dragon spacecraft on the CRS-8 Space Station
http://www.space.com/32526-spacex-rocket-landing-at-sea-captured-by-on-board-camera-chase-plane-video.html

President Barack Obama Hails SpaceX's Rocket Landing Success at Sea
Saturday, April 9, 2016 05:19
Talk about high praise. SpaceX's stunningly successful rocket landing on a drone ship on Friday (April 8) has won accolades from the highest office in the land, with President Barack Obama hailing the company's technological feat.
http://www.space.com/32525-president-obama-hails-spacex-rocket-landing.html

Photos: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launch and Landing for CRS-8 Mission
Saturday, April 9, 2016 05:01
SpaceX launched an experimental inflatable habitat to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 8, 2016.
http://www.space.com/32514-spacex-rocket-launch-landing-photos-dragon-crs8-mission.html

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SpaceX Falcon 9 launches Dragon, lands first stage
by Jeff Foust — April 8, 2016

The Falcon 9 first stage on the deck of a SpaceX drone ship after landing April 8. Credit: SpaceX
Updated 7:00 p.m. Eastern
PHOENIX — SpaceX successfully launched a Dragon cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station April 8 and landed the rocket's first stage on a ship in the ocean after four previous unsuccessful attempts.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off on schedule at 4:43 p.m. Eastern time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after a trouble-free countdown. The rocket's second stage released the Dragon into low Earth orbit ten and a half minute after liftoff.
The rocket's first stage, after separating from the second, performed a series of three burns to attempt a landing on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean downrange from the launch site. Video of the launch showed the stage landing on the ship eight and a half minutes after liftoff, to raucous cheers from SpaceX employees watching the launch at the company's Hawthorne, California, headquarters.
SpaceX had made four previous efforts to land the stage on a ship, part of the company's efforts to recover and eventually reuse the stage. On those previous attempts, the stage either crashed onto the desk of the ship or toppled over.
"The thing that was a little different about this mission on the rocket side was that the rocket landed instead of putting a hole in the ship or tipping over," said Elon Musk, SpaceX chief executive, in a post-launch press conference April 8. He added that, prior to the launch, he and his team estimated they had two-to-one odds of making a successful landing on this mission.
Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability at SpaceX, said at an April 7 prelaunch briefing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center that the company had the option of trying to bring the stage all the way back to Cape Canaveral, similar to the successful landing the company performed on a December launch. They elected, though, to attempt another landing at sea.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 8 carrying a Dragon spacecraft bound for the ISS. Credit: NASA TV
"On this particular flight, we decided we wanted to go to the drone ship and see if we can get a successful landing on the drone ship," he said, in part because upcoming launches only have the option of a drone ship landing given the nature of their missions. "It's a good opportunity for us to refine our drone ship landing capabilities."
At the post-launch briefing, Musk said that crews would go over to the ship as soon as the vehicle was safe to weld the legs to the deck, preventing it from tipping over should winds increase or seas become rough. The drone ship is scheduled to return to port on April 10.
He said that the stage would then be placed on the launch pad in Florda — possibly Launch Complex 39A — for a series of static fire tests to determine its condition. If the stage is in good health, he said SpaceX will "probably" use the stage on another launch, perhaps as soon as June. "We think it be a paying customer, but we have to have some discussions," Musk said of the launch of the reflown stage.
Dragon and future Falcon launches
The Dragon is carrying more than 3,100 kilograms of cargo for the station, including crew supplies, experiments and station hardware. The largest single payload, accounting for nearly half the cargo mass on this mission, is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), a prototype expandable module developed by Bigelow Aerospace that will be installed on the station for testing.
The launch is the third this year for SpaceX, after launches of the Jason-3 ocean science satellite in January and the SES-9 communications satellite in March. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at the Satellite 2016 conference shortly after the SES-9 launch that the company planned up to 18 launches this year, including the long-delayed first launch of the Falcon Heavy.
Koenigsmann said at the pre-launch briefing that SpaceX will still aiming for that goal. "It is true that we have to pick up the pace, and we will pick up the pace," he said. "We're hoping that we'll be able to launch basically every other week by the end of this year and then maybe even increase the pace."
Dragon is scheduled to arrive at the station April 10, with berthing of the spacecraft with the station's Harmony module is schedule for approximately 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

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