SpaceX successfully lands Falcon 9 rocket on floating platform

After several near misses, SpaceX successfully landed its reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform at sea for the first time on Friday night, bringing the booster to rest on a ship off the coast of Florida following a successful liftoff of its Dragon spacecraft.

According to Space.com, the two-stage Falcon 9 lifted off at 4:43 p.m. EDT on Friday afternoon, departing Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and delivering supplies, equipment, and experiments, as well as a new inflatable habitat, to the crew onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Shortly after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage separated from the Dragon capsule and executed a series of engine burns before vertically lowering itself onto the drone ship, nailing the landing for the first time after four previous failed attempts over the past 15 months, the website noted. A previous successful landing took place at a ground-based landing pad in Cape Canaveral.

At a press conference afterwards, SpaceX founder Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets that the maneuver was like “trying to land on a postage stamp” and said that he was elated that the Falcon 9 “landed instead of putting a hole in the ship or tipping over” – an accomplishment which Musk called “another step toward the stars.”

Inflatable habitat, muscle loss experiment included among cargo

In addition to being the first successful sea-based landing for SpaceX, Friday’s launch was also the first successful cargo launch for NASA since a Falcon 9 catastrophically explored only two minutes into its flight last June. That incident was due to a defective internal structural part, the Journal said. The firm has since improved its quality-control and safety procedures.

In addition to pulling off its at-sea landing for the first time, SpaceX was able to deliver supplies and other cargo to the ISS. Included in its payload is an inflatable habitat known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) which NASA believes “has the potential to revolutionize work and life on the space station.”

“The cargo will allow investigators to use microgravity conditions to test the viability of expandable space habitats, assess the impact of antibodies on muscle wasting, use protein crystal growth to aid the design of new disease-fighting drugs, and investigate how microbes could affect the health of the crew and their equipment over a long duration mission,” Dava Newman, Deputy Administrator of the US space agency, said in a statement.

The habitat will arrive on the orbiting facility in an unpressurized trunk, and roughly five days later, it will be removed and attached to the station. BEAM is expected to be inflated by the end of May, and at full size, the habitat will be about 10 feet in diameter and 13 feet long. It will be tested for a period of 24 months, during with time the crew will collect sensor data and monitor conditions in the habitat. The goal is to create a living area for astronauts that occupies less room on spacecraft while still providing adequate work and living space once in orbit.

In addition, the Dragon capsule delivered an experiment designed to assess whether or not myostatin inhibition can help prevent muscle atrophy and weakness in mice during prolonged space missions, an experiment to study fluids at the atomic level, and a protein crystal growth experiment centered around the design and development of drugs.

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Image credit: SpaceX

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