SpaceX First Rocket Re-Launch To Take Place in Fall

For a while now SpaceX have been landing rockets, in the last year alone transforming the unprecedented act into a routine they perform on every launch they do with an ever improving rate of success. Despite the build up of landed rockets in their hangars, however, they are yet to perform the second part of the reusable rocket: a second launch. In order to complete the reusable rocket cycle, SpaceX is finally planning to re-launch one of their landed Falcon 9 boosters.

In the lead up to  the launch of another rocket on Monday which would go on to land on solid ground, SpaceX held a conference where Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability at SpaceX stated that “on the reflight of the recovered booster, that’s going to be most likely in fall this year.” “Of course, we need to have a customer,” Koenigsmann continued. “We’re in talks right now, but we haven’t finalized those talks at this point in time.”

Despite the lack of a definitive customer for the launch, SpaceX have picked the rocket already, which landed at sea on April 8th following the launch of a Dragon capsule’s launch to the ISS.  “We are prepping the booster again,” Koenigsmann explained. “Well, first of all, we have to wash them, right? They come back slightly blackened. And you have to go through a series of tests with the hardware on the booster itself, to make sure everything’s working.”

With the amount of rockets that SpaceX are now retrieving, they certainly have a lot of boosters to work with to perfect their reuse, although we can only hope that this time, it’ll work first time. They’ll have to do something with all these rockets, though, or they’ll quickly run out of hangar space!