SpaceX and NASA plan to launch a rocket Tuesday morning to send supplies and equipment to the International Space Station the first such mission since another company's effort blew up in Virginia in October. <\/p>\n
The SpaceX rocket Falcon 9 is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:20 a.m., lifting the company's Dragon capsule toward rendezvous later this week with the space station. The launch has been postponed several times since an early December attempt was scrubbed. <\/p>\n
The capsule carries a new global-weather-monitoring instrument and 4,100 pounds of supplies and equipment for the six astronauts aboard the space station, including replacements for several items lost when an Orbital Sciences resupply rocket exploded on launch Oct. 28 at NASA's Wallops Island, Va., launch complex. <\/p>\n
For SpaceX, this will be the 14th launch of the Falcon 9, including seven for private clients, without a mishap so far. Officials hope the mission is routine, as NASA and state and local officials envision Kennedy Space Center and the adjacent Cape Canaveral becoming a multiuse spaceport for government, military and private launches for decades to come. <\/p>\n
But the Wallops Island disaster is a reminder that nothing is certain. <\/p>\n
\"In this business you always have to be concerned, because getting anything into space is still a danger. It takes a lot of energy to get something into orbit,\" said Dale Ketcham of Space Florida, the state-run agency to promote space industry. <\/p>\n
SpaceX also will use the mission to test its equipment and procedures to salvage and reuse rockets in the future, rather than have them drop into the Atlantic Ocean to be lost forever. <\/p>\n
After the Falcon 9's first stage is jettisoned, SpaceX will relight the booster rocket's engines for a series of burns, attempting to upright, stabilize and slow it. With a last rocket-engine burn, SpaceX hopes to land it on a bargelike vessel called the \"autonomous spaceport drone ship\" waiting in the ocean. <\/p>\n
The landing test will happen independently of the space-station resupply mission. That's important, because SpaceX said the landing test has a \"low chance\" of succeeding. <\/p>\n
\"The odds of success are not great perhaps 50 percent at best,\" the company reports on its website. \"However this test represents the first in a series of similar tests that will ultimately deliver a fully reusable Falcon 9 first stage.\" <\/p>\n
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SpaceX launch set for Tuesday<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SpaceX and NASA plan to launch a rocket Tuesday morning to send supplies and equipment to the International Space Station the first such mission since another company's effort blew up in Virginia in October. Continue reading