SpaceX will attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket ashore this week

It has become routine to see a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket take off from Cape Canveral in Florida, then watch the first-stage thruster return for a soft landing aboard an autonomous droneship off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. . But the company’s next mission includes the rare return of a Falcon 9 straight to dry land.

Elon Musk’s rocket company will launch Argentina’s Saocom 1B earth observation satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base on Thursday evening. Two smaller spacecraft, a commercial radar satellite called Sequoia and a weather data satellite called Gnomes-1, will also be in the game.

SpaceX has made only one other ground landing in the past 12 months, as part of a International Space Station resupply mission March 7. Several factors determine whether SpaceX lands on land or on a droneship, a critical factor being the flight path and the distance between the rocket and shore once it is separated from the second stage rocket.

As NASASpaceflight.com reported last year, Saocom 1B will take off and fly on a polar track towards the South Pole. After launch, the Falcon 9 will sail along the Florida coast, making it possible to attempt a landing on the ground. This will mark the first orbital launch from Florida to use this South Polar Corridor since 1960.

SpaceX’s launch of the companion Saocom 1A satellite in 2018 also featured a ground landing, but at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This Thursday’s launch was also originally scheduled to take place from the West Coast, but was eventually moved to Florida and delayed in part thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Takeoff is currently set for 4:19 p.m. PT on Thursday and we should see the first stage rocket return to Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1), which is only about 7 miles from the launch pad, just under 10 minutes after the explosion. -of.

As usual, once a livestream is available, we’ll integrate it here, where you can come back and pay around 15 minutes before launch.