SpaceX Hopes to Land Falcon 9 Rocket at Cape Canaveral

He also hinted that a “land landing” is part of his company’s plans, though SpaceX hasn’t confirmed anything yet. Though the barge landings proved unsuccessful, SpaceX always planned on using those as training for actual land-based attempts. (Cape Canaveral’s historic launchpads are getting a bit crowded with commercial enterprise these days; Blue Origin just took over Launch Complex 36 earlier this year). In 2014, the company accomplished a soft ocean landing, but in subsequent attempts to bring Falcon 9 boosters down on platforms, the rockets came in too hard or without enough control. Elon Musk, CEO of the company, reported that SpaceX is trying to land and recover the first stages of Falcon 9 rockets so that they can be flown again. Carol Scott of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said the company’s main aim is to bring the booster back on land. “Their plan is to land it out here on the Cape [Canaveral] side”, Scott told reporters.

SpaceX declined to comment on the report. In fact, SpaceX is going to attempt such a landing sometime this month.

SpaceX may try to make history with its next launch later this month, returning its rocket to a landing pad rather than an ocean-based platform, a NASA official said on Tuesday.

The landing of the Falcon 9 would be a massive first step toward reusable rockets, however, it won’t be the first time that a rocket has landed vertically after taking off. Last week, Blue Origin announced that it had landed the New Shepard booster after sending it to sub-orbital space. To Musk, having the ability to successfully land a rocket after its launch is vital to the future of space travel, due to the high prices associated with rocket launches.

Backing up this claim was SpaceX’s lease of Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13 from the Air Force this past year, of which it officially dubbed Landing Complex 1. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos disagreed. A launch date for its return to flight, a mission that will launch 11 Orbcomm satellites into space, has not been finalized, but the company is targeting December 15th.

It was originally expected that the launch would include another attempt at landing the rocket on the autonomous spaceport drone that was deployed into the Atlantic Ocean.