Well, these Falcon 9 landings never get old. Imagine, just over a decade ago, the idea of being able to land a rocket upright after being in space seemed crazy. And then SpaceX did it.
After the first successful landing in December 2015, SpaceX occasionally had mishaps with booster landings, but in the last few years the company has really hit the ground running.
The Elon Musk-led space company shared a video (below) of its recent landing this week, with dramatic footage captured by a camera mounted on the rocket showing the spectacular early morning ride home.
The Falcon 9 mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and involved launching 25 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
This was the 11th flight of the first booster stage (B1093) in support of this mission, which previously launched SDA T1TL-B, SDA T1TL-C and now nine Starlink missions.
As the video shows, after extending the upper stage, the 41.2-meter-tall launch vehicle returned to Earth a few minutes later and landed on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You,” which was waiting in the Pacific Ocean.
To achieve an autonomous landing like this, a Falcon 9 booster first performs a cold gas engine flip after stage separation, sometimes followed by a boostback burn. During descent, the booster uses its grid fins to travel through the atmosphere before performing an entry burn to slow it down. Finally, it performs a landing kick while extending its legs for a stable landing.
The landings allow SpaceX to reuse its launch vehicles multiple times, reducing the cost of space travel and opening access to more companies and organizations.
Just last weekend, another Falcon 9 booster set a new reuse record with 33 flights after launching for the first time in June 2021.
SpaceX has applied lessons learned from the landings to its much larger and more powerful Starship rocket, which is expected to make its 12th test flight in March.
