SpaceX launches, lands Falcon 9 rocket

Rocket sends Japanese communications satellite into orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Used rockets may soon form a crowd in SpaceX's hangar at Kennedy Space Center.

A third is on its way back there after sticking a landing early Friday on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, minutes after a 1:21 a.m. Friday launch that later delivered a Japanese communications satellite to orbit, News 6 partner Florida Today reported.

“Woohoo!!” CEO Elon Musk tweeted after the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage touched down on a ship about 200 miles off the Florida coast. “May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar.”

[WATCH VIDEO OF ROCKET LAUNCH (left) AND LANDING (right)]

The landing at sea was SpaceX’s second in less than a month, and followed a first booster landing in December on a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Last month’s feat, after several failed attempts, showed that it was possible to land on an unpiloted “drone ship” bobbing in the ocean.

But expectations Friday were low. SpaceX repeatedly said success was unlikely, while Musk offered even odds.

The reason: The Falcon 9’s first stage was returning to the ground “a lot faster and hotter than last time,” Musk said, due to the mission’s flight to a much higher orbit.

About 10 minutes after liftoff, cameras on the SpaceX ship named “Of Course I Still Love You” showed a brilliant flash as the booster entered the picture with several engines blazing.

Employees who had gathered to watch the launch at SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles groaned, thinking the flash signaled the crash that many expected.

But moments later, after the flash faded and smoke cleared, the rocket surprisingly appeared upright on its four landing legs, engines flickering in the darkness over the “X” marking the center of the ship’s deck.

The groans were replaced by a roar, then chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

The accomplishment has even bigger implications than last month’s for SpaceX’s goals to recover and reuse rockets, which Musk believes is the key to cutting launch costs and even enabling human settlement of Mars someday.

Roughly half of SpaceX’s launches fly trajectories for which only ocean landings are possible. If SpaceX couldn’t land those missions flying to high orbits like Friday’s — more than 20,000 miles up — then reusability’s promise would be severely limited.

Now Musk’s vision appears more achievable than ever — assuming the rockets return healthy enough to be launched again without major refurbishment, which still has yet to be proven.

After the landing, crews were expected to board the ship and weld steel shoes over the booster’s landing legs to keep it from tipping over during the journey home.

The rocket stage should return to Port Canaveral within three or four days, if last month’s recovery operation serves as a model. There a crane will offload the stage for trucking to SpaceX’s KSC hangar, where it would join the two previously recovered stages.

The first of those is scheduled to depart this summer for display at SpaceX headquarters, but Musk wants to re-fly the second as soon as possible.

The landing excitement Friday again overshadowed the mission’s main purpose: launching the JCSAT-14 satellite for Tokyo-based SKY Perfect JSAT, Asia’s largest satellite operator with 16 now in orbit.

The more than $100 million satellite separated from the Falcon 9’s upper stage 32 minutes after liftoff, on its way to an orbit 22,300 miles over the equator.

The spacecraft built by Space Systems Loral is expected to deliver high-definition TV and broadband Internet services for at least 15 years to parts of Asia, Russia and Oceania.

The launch was SpaceX’s fourth launch this year and fifth since December, when it returned the Falcon 9 rocket to flight after a failure last June.

A Falcon 9 could launch another commercial satellite from Cape Canaveral later this month, setting up another ocean landing try. An International Space Station supply run tentatively planned in June may present the next opportunity to return a booster to land.