CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) ― SpaceX is making another supply run to the International Space Station for NASA. But it’s the rocket’s return ― not its takeoff ― that has space fans talking.

Minutes after Tuesday morning’s planned launch from Cape Canaveral, the first stage of the unmanned Falcon rocket will aim for a vertical test landing on a barge in the Atlantic. The 14-story booster will soar close to 250 kilometers high, before flying back down and attempting to settle upright on the floating platform ― close to the size of a football field.

“When you look at it on the ground, I think it’s probably a very, very big platform, a big spaceport,” Hans Koenigsmann, vice president for mission assurance at SpaceX, said Monday on the eve of launch. “But if you look at it from, I think, almost 200 or so kilometers up in suborbit, then it looks like a very, very small place to land on.”

“I’m going to be super excited if this works,” Koenigsmann noted. But he stressed that he did not want anyone losing sight of the main purpose of the Falcon’s mission: to deliver critical supplies to the space station and its six inhabitants. This will be the sixth flight of a Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab. It’s loaded more than usual because of an October launch explosion that wiped out another company’s delivery effort in October.


koreaherald@heraldcorp.com