Tomorrow , SpaceX will become the first private society to establish an orbital spacecraft twice . Only government agency have done this before .
The company will be launching a Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 to the International Space Station ( ISS ) fromLaunch Complex 39Aat Cape Canaveral in Florida . This missionary work – which will be the 100th flight of steps from 39A – will also see the first stage admirer of the rocket attack to set ashore on a landing place pad at Cape Canaveral .
This will be the eleventh cargo mission under contract with NASA , called CRS-11 ( Commercial Resupply Services ) . This spacecraft was launched for the first time in September 2014 , onCRS-4 .
And that ’s a fully grown deal . One of SpaceX ’s goals is to bring down the price of space travel by reusing components . They ’ve already plunge and shoot down multiple rockets , with one of these fly to quad twice . Reusing the Dragon vehicle is the next milepost .
The launching was originally scheduled to take billet yesterday , but storms hampered that effort . The company is now planning to launch tomorrow , Saturday , June 3 , at 5.07pm EDT ( 10.07pm BST ) .
The list of vehicles that have go to space , returned , and then fly again is small . Scaled Composites did it with their subocular space plane SpaceShipOne in 2004 , and Blue Origin’sNew Shepardperformed a similar suborbital feat in 2015 and 2016 .
As for orbital vehicles , NASA ’s Space Shuttle is no doubt the most famous reclaimable artificial satellite , flying from 1981 to 2015 . The Soviet Union ’s Buran outer space shuttlecock completed one remote-controlled spaceflight in 1988 . And more recently , the mystical X-37B miniskirt - shuttlecock return from space after itsfourth mission .
So recycle Dragon will be a cock-a-hoop mass for SpaceX. The exact cost of renovate the spacecraft to aviate again is n’t clear , but one would await it was significantly cheaper than the cost of work up a new spacecraft .
Dragon will be carrying vital supplies to the ISS , as well as a number ofinteresting experiments . One of these is NASA ’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer ( NICER ) , which will be attached to the exterior of the station in an attempt to study quickly spinning neutron star .
It will also be channel experiments to monitor seedling ontogeny in microgravity , study gaseous flames on the station , and see how particles called colloid move in gels and pick .
Dragon will stay aboard the station for one month , returning in former July with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Baja California . We do n’t yet recognise if it ’ll fell again , but if all goes to plan , we ’ll surely be see more Dragon fomite make multiple trip to infinite .
