Despite the 100 per cent success of bringing back a Falcon-9 rocket to Earth in December, SpaceX now says that its next attempt of a successful return will be on a floating barge out at sea.  Two previous attempts at a barge landing have been unsuccessful.

The reason is that SpaceX is using a different, older version of the Falcon-9 (version 1.1). This version, says SpaceX, isn’t quite as powerful as its latest rockets and a sea landing needs less fuel because the barge can be waiting at the end of the rocket’s journey.

The scheduled launch is a week away, on January 17^th when the rocket’s primary mission is to loft a Jason-3 ocean monitoring satellite for NASA.  The launch will take place from Vandenberg airbase in California.

Other posts by :

1. US spectrum shuffle could earn SES billions
2. FAA plans to tax rocket launches
3. Could someone buy AST SpaceMobile?
4. FCC: D2C is set for ubiquitous connectivity
5. SpaceX continues complaints over Amazon Leo
6. Starlink struggling for approval on South Africa, India
7. Impressive Starlink deployment rate
8. Bank: Space industry worth $1tn by 2040
9. Xona Space wants 259 LEO satellites

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite