SpaceX to attempt again to land rocket back on Earth

But Musk, the tech billionaire who has sought to disrupt the space industry, said in a tweet early Saturday that it was “currently looking good for a Sunday night (Florida time) attempted orbital launch and rocket landing at Cape Canaveral”.

SpaceX on Sunday, December 20, counted down to its first rocket launch since an explosion after liftoff destroyed its unmanned Dragon cargo ship bound for the International Space Station 6 months ago.

SpaceX is planning to launch its Falcon 9 rocket for the first time in almost six months on Sunday, and says it will try flying the first-stage booster back to Florida for a landing for the first time. A successful touchdown on legs within 10 minutes of liftoff would be a breakthrough in Musk’s vision to lower launch costs by recovering and reusing rockets. Musk said at a forum past year at MIT. Both stages hit their target but ultimately crashed. Space Systems. Roth spoke to 9NEWS in November, as the company prepared to send the satellites to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the launch.

Should nearby residents be anxious about a rocket plummeting toward their backyards? The Federal Aviation Administration’s go-ahead was required in order for SpaceX to proceed.

Still, all but non-essential personnel reportedly will be barred from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Business Wire reported that, in addition to the primary mission of launching ORBCOMM’s fleet of commercial communications satellites, SpaceX is attempting a secondary test objective of landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on land for the first time at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1.

And representatives from SpaceX, the 45th Space Wing and FAA recently met withBrevard County officials and emergency responders to brief them about what to expect.

Since its mishap last June, SpaceX has upgraded the Falcon 9 rocket, which is now sitting on the pad at Cape Canaveral waiting for the countdown.

“It’s quite emotionally traumatic, actually”, Musk said last week of the experience.

The Orbcomm mission is ideal for the Falcon 9’s return because it is a relatively simple one, requiring only one burn of the upper stage engine.

SpaceX has grown significantly since 2009, and the California-based company claims it has up to $7 billion of orders in its backlog.

Back in June, a SpaceX rocket exploded shortly after takeoff, destroying cargo meant for astronauts on the space station as well as numerous Colorado experiments on-board. The payload to Geosynchronous orbit is close to 5 tons and to low earth orbit the rocket can carry over a 13 ton payload. In a series of Twitter posts, he pointed out that SpaceX’s rockets were bigger and more powerful because they were created to fly into orbit, not just to the edge of what’s considered space.