SpaceX has now nailed its third landing on an ocean-going drone ship - with its reusable Falcon 9 1st stage rocket making a successful touchdown on May 27th 2016 (and the fourth overall landing for the company).
This was a particularly 'hot' (as in high velocity, high angle) mission, sending the THAICOM 8 satellite (for commercial telecoms in India, Africa and South-East Asia) to a 91,000 km high super-synchronous transfer orbit. From there the satellite will maneuver itself to an eventual geosynchronous (36,000 km) orbit.
SpaceX also released the following extraordinary video taken from the side of the 1st stage - showing the sequence from space to landing, all in a time-compressed 30 seconds of what was actually about ten nail-biting minutes. It's a wild ride, and hopefully we'll keep seeing lots of equally compelling scenes in the future as the private space industry continues to grow.
Caleb A. Scharf is director of astrobiology at Columbia University. He is author and co-author of more than 100 scientific research articles in astronomy and astrophysics. His work has been featured in publications such as New Scientist, Scientific American, Science News, Cosmos Magazine, Physics Today and National Geographic. For many years he wrote the Life, Unbounded blog for Scientific American.
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