US: SpaceX is planning the next landing of its Falcon 9 booster at Cape Canaveral in July, when the company plans to launch a Dragon supply ship to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 rocket before then will deploy communications satellites into high-altitude geostationary transfer orbits, a destination too high that will require too much speed in the first stage.
NASA announced Monday that SpaceX’s next cargo run to the space station will launch no earlier than July 16. The position of the space station’s orbit that day puts the launch time around EDT (0532 GMT). The touchdown attempt at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral will come about 10 minutes after liftoff. The landings are purely experimental, but they are a major part of SpaceX’s strategy to field a partially reusable rocket in a bid to slash launch costs.
SpaceX has returned one Falcon 9 booster to the launch site. A 15-story first stage flew back to Cape Canaveral in December after launching 11 small communications satellites for Orbcomm. Along with that, SpaceX intends to aim its spent first stage boosters for landings at sea, where the company’s mobile drone ship is positioned for missions with satellites heading for lofty geostationary transfer orbits, a type of trajectory stretching at least 22,300 miles (35,700 kilometers) above Earth.
SpaceX nailed its first landing at sea in April after launching its last resupply run to the space station. The next Falcon 9 rocket launch May 6 carried a large Japanese communications satellite into geostationary transfer orbit, and the booster survived a scorching high speed re-entry to successfully land on the ocean-going platform again.
At least two more Falcon 9 flights are due before the July 16 cargo launch. Both are loaded with commercial communications satellites designed to operate in geostationary orbit, leaving insufficient residual fuel for a daring return-to-launch-site maneuver. The first stage boosters on those missions will also target the landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
Source: SpaceFlight
