The rocket carried a capsule full of food, experiments and other station goods for NASA.
Boldly going where they had already gone before, a SpaceX rocket and cargo capsule blasted off Monday afternoon from Cape Canaveral on a return trip to the International Space Station.
The Falcon 9 rocket, whose first stage launched ISS supplies last August, fired nine Merlin main engines again to roar from Launch Complex 40 at 4:30 p.m.
Ten minutes later, the unmanned Dragon capsule, which launched to the ISS two years earlier, floated free of the rocket’s upper stage to start a two-day journey back to the orbiting research complex.
It was the second time a recycled Falcon 9 and Dragon had launched together, and the 11th time in just over a year that SpaceX had re-launched a used — or what the company prefers to call “flight proven” — rocket.
“It’s becoming the norm, and we like that,” said Jessica Jensen, SpaceX director of Dragon mission management. “Reusability is really important for the future of spaceflight. It’s the only way we’re going to get thousands of people to space to explore the stars, the moon, Mars, and to make life multi-planetary. Otherwise, it’s just going to be a cost-prohibitive dream.”
SpaceX on Monday did not attempt to land the Falcon rocket’s first stage after its second flight, instead collecting data from an experimental splashdown in the ocean.
An upgraded Falcon 9 is expected to begin flying soon that SpaceX says should be able to fly at least 10 times.
Around 7 a.m. Wednesday, NASA astronaut Scott Tingle and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai will attempt to capture the Dragon with the station’s 58-foot robotic arm.
Ground controllers will then reel the Dragon and its 5,800 pounds of food, equipment and experiments into a docking port.
Most of the cargo is related to more than 50 science investigations the Dragon will support on its way up to the ISS or back down to Earth.
They include:
The Dragon is expected to return to a Pacific Ocean splashdown after a 30-day stay to complete SpaceX’s 14th of 20 missions booked under a NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract. SpaceX has been awarded a follow-on cargo contract that runs through 2024.
The Dragon is the only spacecraft flying today that can bring large amounts of cargo back from space, and this mission one will return with an interesting passenger.
Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot developed by NASA and General Motors, requires repairs of an apparent electrical short. It could launch to the ISS again in a year or so.
The Dragon is flying with a new trunk (which does not return from space), new heat shield and new parachute, but SpaceX said more components were reused than on previous Dragon missions.
“There’s only a handful of things that we are not reusing,” said Jensen. “Almost everything on the interior of the capsule we were able to reuse.”
Monday’s launch was SpaceX’s second in four days, following a Friday flight from California, and he company’s seventh of the year in just over three months.
It kicked off a busy April for the Eastern Range, which expects to host four launches this month.
United Launch Alliance is up next with an Atlas V rocket targeting an April 12 launch of a national security mission for the Air Force.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 could follow April 16 with launch of a planet-hunting NASA science mission from the Cape. And another Falcon 9 is targeting a late-April launch of a communications satellite for Bangladesh from KSC.
