Work to refurbish the damaged site began in earnest in February, with upgrades including an improved water system that will allow for longer “static fires" when a SpaceX rocket’s Merlin engines are tested ahead of a launch. SpaceX spent roughly $50 million to rebuild and upgrade Space Launch Complex 40 after the accident, which destroyed the rocket and the satellite it was slated to carry into orbit. SpaceX launched its first reused Falcon 9 rocket booster in March and reused a Dragon capsule on a space-station resupply mission in June.ĬRS-13 will be the first launch in more than a year from the Florida launch pad that was significantly damaged when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded there in September 2016. While parts of the Space Shuttle boosters Nasa flew for decades were refurbishable, no company has pulled off the “rapid reusability" SpaceX is targeting to bring down costs. The mission, called CRS-13, is slated for 11:46 am local time from a Florida launch pad and will carry 4,800 pounds of research, crew supplies and hardware. The company plans to ferry supplies to the space station using a pre-flown Falcon 9 rocket and a refurbished Dragon cargo capsule on Wednesday. In the meantime, SpaceX has been carrying out a series of unmanned missions for Nasa. Musk has announced plans to send paying tourists on flights around the moon next year. have billion-dollar contracts to send American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), with the first key tests of the technology slated for 2018. The White House didn’t provide details about how Nasa’s moon or Mars missions would be funded. Trump scrapped the asteroid mission and revived ambitions to return to the moon, but set no time frame for going there or to Mars. Trump on Monday issued a space directive that barely differs from a memo his predecessor issued in 2010, changing only a paragraph in which Barack Obama had called for Nasa to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s. “What is remarkable is that SpaceX appears to be continuing to lead the march down the cost curve for space access." “At this point, the notion of reuse of hardware is almost unremarkable," said Ernie Chung, an aerospace, defence and airline consultant at AlixPartners LLP.
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