SpaceX has been able to successfully land its Falcon 9 rocket after a mission on both land and sea. It has demonstrated multiple times that it’s capable of recovering a rocket but the company hasn’t reused one of those rockets for another mission just yet, but that might change in the near future. SpaceX is one step closer to relaunching one of its used Falcon 9 rockets from a previous mission.
The company revealed today via Twitter that it has been able to conduct a static test fire of a recovered Falcon 9 first-stage. This is a major step in ensuring that the recovered rocket component can be reused in another mission.
The tweet included a picture of the Falcon 9 first-stage rocket recovered after the CRS-8 International Space Station resupply mission in April last year. This was the first one that the company was able to land successfully on a floating barge in the sea. CEO Elon Musk said at that time that it was likely for this particular booster to be qualified for reuse.
The company will be looking forward to reusing this booster in a mission with European satellite company SES and expects that the launch might take place in the near future, perhaps as early as next month. Musk’s companies are known for their aggressive timelines so many skeptics will take this claim with a bit of salt.
Prepping to fly again — recovered CRS-8 first stage completed a static fire test at our McGregor, TX rocket development facility last week. pic.twitter.com/QEtKVJ1Jhc
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 1, 2017