Rapid Rocket Landing Progression

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about SpaceX’s last one and a half years during which they managed to make the landing of a rocket’s first stage to a common thing.

About two years ago, landing a rocket back on Earth after having launched it into space seemed like a very unrealistic endeavor. However, it was shown to be possible by SpaceX on 22 December 2015 as they successfully returned the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth after it successfully decoupled from the upper stage [1]. Until this point, rockets were designed to last for one flight only. After having completed their mission, they were discarded, fell back to Earth and got destroyed on impact.

Of course, the first landing only showed that it is possible to land the first stage of an orbital class rocket back on Earth after it has completed its mission. At this point, the technology still had some flaws and resulted in some additional crashes of subsequent first stage landing attempts on the floating landing platforms in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. However, SpaceX kept going, analyzed the data gathered from the failed landing attempts and constantly improved their landing system.

Aside from improving the landing system, SpaceX also worked hard on reusing already flown first stages to reduce the launch costs and achieving a partly reusable space launch system. Finally, on 31 March 2017, SpaceX launched a satellite into space using a refurbished Falcon 9 first stage which also managed to land back on Earth for the second time [2].

Since then, SpaceX continued to improve their rockets in order to make them more reliable and capable. However, despite these great efforts, the landing of a first stage that launched a satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit still remained risky due to the high reentry velocity and aggressive launch profile in general.

Hence, the chances for a successful landing were not that high as SpaceX launched a communication satellite into space on Friday, 23 June 2017. However, despite the low expectations, the first stage managed it to overcome the high reentry velocity and the fast descent rate as it approached the drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean. A couple seconds later, the first stage managed to safely land on the deck of the floating landing platform using 3 of its 9 engines.

Personally, I am not only impressed by SpaceX’s rapid improvements of their Falcon 9 rocket but also by the fact how fast landing a rocket back on Earth has become a common thing. Two days after this high-speed landing, SpaceX launched the next Falcon 9 rocket, this time from the west coast of the USA, and managed to land the first stage used in this mission, too.

The first landing of an orbital class rocket is not that long ago and since then SpaceX has improved their technologies by such a degree that successful landings have become the norm. It is just impressive what can be achieved when people start to work together and try to solve big problems and achieve ambitious goals.