SpaceX Nails Its Fourth Successful Rocket Landing
SpaceX made yet another successful landing with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket on Friday, marking the fourth time in total, and the third in a row to take place on a drone ship in the Atlantic ocean. Between SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' space agency Blue Origin, these rocket landings may become so frequent they start to get a little boring.
The launch was tasked with sending a commercial communications satellite, the 3,100-kilogram THAICOM8, into orbit, where it will serve the Southeast Asian region for the next 15 years by improving television and data signals.
That part of the mission was an easy success, but landing the rocket was expected to be a bit more complicated than the previous two sea landings. Fortunately SpaceX seems to be getting better and better each time, as the Falcon 9 rocket made a perfect vertical landing despite these doubts.
The other thing that gets better and better with each landing is SpaceX's release of video footage. Last time we were treated to footage shot from cameras aboard the drone ship, but SpaceX topped that this time with a camera placed on the rocket itself, at an angle that reveals its point of view as it descends to Earth.