Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
Cast your mind back to last week, when SpaceX landed a rocket on a barge for the second time. The connotations were awesome, but we were lacking any actual footage from the landing itself.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Well, never ones to let us go wanting, SpaceX has now released not one, but three different camera shots of this landing. SpaceX said it was their “hottest and fastest” landing yet, being actually the third landing in total for the Falcon 9 – the first, on ground, was in December 2015.
This was also the second night landing, with the launch of a Japanese telecommunication satellite taking place at 1:21 a.m. EDT (6:21 a.m. BST) from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
As with all landings so far, the first stage of the rocket separated just beyond the boundary of space, 100 kilometers (62 miles) high. It then spun around and re-ignited its engine, returning itself in the direction of its launch trajectory, and finally using its thruster to perform a powered landing on the floating barge, called Of Course I Still Love You.
The odds of success had been rated as 50:50, but it all passed without a hitch. You can watch the successful landing in the stunning video below, as SpaceX keeps marching towards its goal of making rockets reusable.
