#Spacex falcon 9 rocket launch tv#

So far, its spent almost $400 million to get there.

SpaceX is the first company to reach the launchpad. 'And any enterprise that learns from past experience will hopefully do better,' he said.īut the competition is rabid. 'They're standing on NASA's shoulders, so they're designing rockets based on the experience we've had for 50 years or more, going into space,' said George Musser, editor of the Scientific American. The United States will be renting space from the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft. NASA selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle because the United States will not have its own way to get to the space station. The administration would like to see whether private companies can do it cheaper and more efficiently, as the shuttle program is about to fly into retirement. NASA has been flying shuttles in low Earth orbit and going to and from the space station for 30 years. This push toward the privatization of space is part of President Obama's blueprint to allow NASA to do bigger and better things with its budget, such as a mission to Mars. the task that Kennedy put us on to,' he said. 'If the country executes and the administration and Congress execute in that direction, the impact of these changes will be on par, perhaps even greater, than. Musk says he believes the United States is at the beginning of a profound, fundamental renaissance in space exploration, perhaps greater than when President Kennedy declared the United States was going to the moon during the infancy of the space program. 'It's time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine,' said Musk in an interview with CNN last month. NASA hopes companies such as SpaceX can take over transportation to the international space station. It's enormously gratifying to see them succeed today,' he said. 'As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it's safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit. 'Space X's accomplishment is an important milestone in the commercial transportation effort and puts the company a step closer to providing cargo services to the International Space Station,' he said.įormer Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was high on the launch's possibilities. NASA administrator Charles Bolden congratulated the SpaceX team. The capsule is expected to orbit for about a year and eventually burn up in the atmosphere. 'Telemetry showed essentially a bullseye: 126 0.2% on perigee and 126 1% on apogee.' 'Nominal shutdown and orbit was almost exactly 250 km,' Musk said in a written statement. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, sent out the technical details of the successful launch, which he said performed its mission to deposit the Dragon mock-up into a 155-mile (250-km) orbit to near perfection. The successful launch is the latest step toward commercial space ventures that could eventually ferry astronauts and cargo to the international space station.

#Spacex falcon 9 rocket launch tv#

NASA TV will not broadcast the de-orbit burn and splashdown, and updates will be posted on the agency’s space station blog.Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN) - Friday's test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket was 'essentially a bullseye,' SpaceX officials said after the rocket successfully pushed past the earth's atmosphere and deposited a mock-up of its Dragon space capsule in orbit. After re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will make a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida. Today, ground controllers at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, will command a deorbit burn. The Dragon spacecraft successfully departed the space station one month after arriving at the orbiting laboratory to deliver about 5,800 pounds of cargo including crew supplies and scientific investigations. The station was flying about 259 miles over the Pacific Ocean at the time of release at 11:05 a.m. PDT) on Friday, August 19, flight controllers on the ground sent commands to release the uncrewed SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module. The SpaceX Dragon cargo craft backs away from the space station moments after undocking from the Harmony module’s forward port during an orbital sunrise.