SpaceX to land rocket on Earth after launch

Photo Courtesy: SpaceX

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: SpaceX will attempt to land a rocket on Earth on Tuesday.

After observing that multimillion-dollar engines of a rocket end up as trash after single launching, SpaceX has decided to land a rocket on Earth.

The California-based private spaceflight company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), will attempt to land the first stage of the rocket intact on a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean. After the booster falls away and the second stage continues pushing the payload to orbit, its engines will reignite to turn it around and guide it to a spot about 200 miles east of Jacksonville, Fla.

In October during a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Elon Musk, the chief executive of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation had said “Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level,” as per The New York Times.

On Tuesday, his company hopes to upend the economics of space travel.

One can watch the SpaceX launch live on www.spacex.com beginning Tue Jan, 6 2015 4:30 PM IST and 5 AM EST (1000 GMT).