Reuters, Florida :
A SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off on Sunday from a Florida launch pad once used to send NASA astronauts to the moon, a step forward for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his company’s goal of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
The 229-foot tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 soared off a seaside launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:39 am, ET (1439 GMT) carrying a Dragon cargo ship bound for the station.
Nine minutes after blastoff, the main section of the rocket flew back to a landing pad at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the eighth successful touchdown for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
“Baby came back,” Mr Musk wrote on Twitter, celebrating the re-landing, which came a day after SpaceX decided to delay the mission 13 seconds before launch due to concerns about the steering system in the rocket’s upper stage, the company said.
Sunday’s launch was the first for SpaceX from Launch Complex 39A, originally built for the 1960s-era Apollo moon program and later repurposed for the space shuttles.
The pad was last used for the final space shuttle launch in 2011. In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease to use pad and has spent millions remodeling it.
A SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off on Sunday from a Florida launch pad once used to send NASA astronauts to the moon, a step forward for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his company’s goal of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
The 229-foot tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 soared off a seaside launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:39 am, ET (1439 GMT) carrying a Dragon cargo ship bound for the station.
Nine minutes after blastoff, the main section of the rocket flew back to a landing pad at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the eighth successful touchdown for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
“Baby came back,” Mr Musk wrote on Twitter, celebrating the re-landing, which came a day after SpaceX decided to delay the mission 13 seconds before launch due to concerns about the steering system in the rocket’s upper stage, the company said.
Sunday’s launch was the first for SpaceX from Launch Complex 39A, originally built for the 1960s-era Apollo moon program and later repurposed for the space shuttles.
The pad was last used for the final space shuttle launch in 2011. In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease to use pad and has spent millions remodeling it.
