SpaceX delays launch and landing test of Falcon 9 rocket

SpaceX has come close to landing a rocket but has never actually pulled the feat off. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, stuck a landing last month but SpaceX founder Elon Musk pointed out that was a suborbital trip.

The new-and-improved Falcon 9 is now 229.6 feet tall and can produce up to 1.7 million pounds of thrust – a unit of measurement for rocket power. That attempted landing will cause a large sonic boom over parts of Florida, as its rocket stage breaks the sound barrier on return from space.

Rather than simply falling into the sea, or burning up in the atmosphere and being destroyed like typical space rocket boosters, the Falcon 9 will try to land vertically (and intact) back on the ground after launching its upper capsule into space.

Several attempts to land the Falcon 9’s first stage on a floating ocean platform have failed – with the rocket either colliding with the autonomous drone ship or tipping over.

On Saturday, SpaceX will ferry 11 satellites into orbit for the telecommunications company Orbcomm Inc.

Orbcomm, the maker of the 11-satellite fleet that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is supposed to ferry to orbit, also needs more time to analyze the data from a Friday’s test flight, when the rocket’s nine engines were ignited for a brief moment.

If UK viewers feel like staying up late to see what could be a truly historic moment, SpaceX will be streaming the whole launch (and hopefully the landing) via their website.

“Tomorrow night (Monday) has a 10 percent higher chance of good landing”. The same design features that allow the rocket to break free from the atmosphere and go deeper into space makes the vehicle much harder to land upright back on the Earth’s surface. Scientists fear that another explosion for the Falcon 9 rocket will turn to be disastrous for the company.

Sunday’s launch window lasts just 60 seconds.

The same model of rocket will be used for Monday’s planned mission.