Trending News: SpaceX Just Landed A Rocket On A Tiny Drone Ship In The Middle Of The Ocean
Why Is This Important?
Because one week Elon Musk is revolutionizing the car industry and the space industry the next.
Long Story Short
After trying and failing on four previous occasions, SpaceX finally nailed the landing of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This means the rocket's costly first stage can be reused on future space missions, which saves a big chunk of the costs associated with flying to space.
Long Story
"Fifth times the charm."
That's what one of SpaceX's webcast hosts said after the incredible landing of the Falcon 9's first stage on a drone ship at 4:43 p.m. Eastern. The ship stuck the landing after sending 7,000 pounds of cargo and an inflatable room toward the International Space Station, according to Tech Insider.
Watch the glorious moment here:
This history-making accomplishment adds a big check mark to one of CEO Elon Musk's most passionate projects, which could greatly bring down the cost of space travel, and even help humans get to Mars — but it was far from easy.
This is the fifth attempt at landing a Falcon 9 first stage on a floating barge, with all previous attempts ending in the rocket missing the mark or tumbling over.
Last year, SpaceX made a substantial step forward by landing the costly body of the rocket on land, but Musk has stated that the space shuttle and exploration company wanted to nail an ocean landing to prepare for higher velocity missions that may not have enough fuel to make it to land.
Today's landing also proves that if SpaceX can land its rockets on a drone ship that's constantly moving, it can land anywhere.
But while today is a big success that will surely have SpaceX workers partying into the weekend, the company isn't done testing the barge landings.
"The next two or three flights are going to be drone ship landings — there's no choice there, because we can't get to land," said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of flight reliability, at a press conference before the launch, as quoted by Mashable.
Today wasn't all good news in the universe. The Keplar space craft had to go into emergency mode, while searching for exoplanets a.k.a. alien life.
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SpaceX’s drone ship is named “Of Course I Still Love You,” as an ode Iain Banks’ science fiction novels, as reported by Tech Crunch.
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