Starting this weekend, SpaceX is about to land a lot more rockets

Early Sunday morning, SpaceX is expected to launch its second Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket – the final and most powerful version of the vehicle the company plans to manufacture. After the launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the vehicle on one of its autonomous drones in the Atlantic. And the landings should become quite routine now, since all SpaceX missions will now use block 5.

The Falcon 9 Block 5 is optimized for fast reuse, according to the company. It includes a number of improvements that facilitate the landing of the vehicle after launch, as well as enhancements that minimize the amount of refurbishment that the rocket needs between flights. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says blocks 5 will not need a major renovation for the first 10 flights, and could potentially fly up to 100 times before being removed. The ultimate goal of the company is to run these vehicles in just 24 hours after landing. The fastest SpaceX has been able to handle until here is two and a half months.

SpaceX launched the first Block 5 in May, using it to send a communications satellite in orbit for Bangladesh. Since then, he has mainly launched the previous version of the rocket, Block 4, and chose not to recover these vehicles after takeoff. They had all flown in space and were already back. Blocks 4 can only be reused once or twice, and SpaceX probably chose to discard them before moving to block 5 full time

Although block 5 is the latest SpaceX upgrade for the Falcon 9, there are improvements that the company must do. Above all, SpaceX has yet to add improved helium tanks to the vehicle, which are needed to pressurize the rocket during the flight. And these must be added before SpaceX can launch people on this rocket for the first time.

Because the Block 5 is the vehicle that SpaceX will use to launch NASA's astronauts at the International Space Station, as part of the Commercial program Crew of the space agency. And NASA requires SpaceX to launch Block 5 in its final crew configuration at least seven times before people can board. But the first flight of Block 5 did not include these improved helium tanks, so, technically, this did not count for this requirement of seven flights. Once these tanks are added, however, the rocket will be in its disposal from the crew. SpaceX says the first flight to include the tanks will be its disjointed demonstration flight for Commercial Crew, when the company will send an empty crew capsule to the International Space Station.

Meanwhile, SpaceX will continue to launch Blocks 5 for the foreseeable future without any major improvements. Tomorrow's rocket will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and launch a Telstar 19 VANTAGE telecommunications satellite in a high orbit for Canada's Telesat. There is a 60% chance that the weather will be propitious to launch, according to the 45th Space Wing, which oversees launches from the Florida coast. Takeoff is scheduled between 0150 ET and 0550 ET, and SpaceX coverage begins approximately 15 minutes prior to take-off. If you are at this time, be sure to listen to another SpaceX launch and drop combos.