SpaceX will try to land its reusable rocket on an ocean dock

Approximately two minutes after the launch, the Falcon 9’s first stage will separate and begin navigating toward a barge in the Pacific Ocean where it will deploy its landing legs and attempt to land. It will help both agencies not only in watching sea-levels rise, but gather information needed to predict hurricanes, severe weather, and watch wave heights that might affect ships and offshore operations.

The private space company has attempted to land rockets on floating drone ships before, but each of its previous attempts have ended in failure. A freshly constructed Falcon 9 will be utilized. Their Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with NASA’s Jason-3 satellite on board.

SpaceX will use an older version of the Falcon 9 than the one that successfully stuck a landing last month at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Here’s what happened last April, the last time SpaceX tried a sea landing for its rocket.

A mobile landing pad will provide flexibility in launches, as returning to a launch facility or landing on a stationary empty space is inconvenient. Musk recently confirmed that the booster suffered no damage during the December landing and was already in good enough shape to be used again, although the company has no plans to reuse the historic booster. Instead of tossing away its $61 million first-stage Dragon 9 booster after every flight, it will simply need to pay for $200,000 in refueling costs (and other ancillary costs related to refurbishing the Falcon 9 for flight) to prep it for the next mission.

SpaceX is going to keep fast pace of reusable technology development (more about reusable technology You can read here). 1 isn’t as capable as its newer rocket, and landing it at sea will require less fuel than taking it back to the landing pad.

Two launches with second reusing the first stage.

Falcon 9’s successful landing last month. Elon Musk has also stated that the re-usage of rockets will not be a practice they will engage in though.