Saturday 10 January 2015, American company’s returning rocket-carrier SpaceX was launched into space for the first time. According to Andrius Vilkauskas, the Dean of KTU Mechanical Engineering and Design Faculty (MEDF), the launch of the rocket opens new possibilities in space industry, as flights to Earth’s orbit and the International Space Station (ISS) should become considerably cheaper.
10 January 11:47 am in Lithuanian time the trial SpaceX rocket-carrier named Falcon 9 finally took off from the space centre in Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA), after its repeatedly delayed launch. It carries the capsule Dragon as ordered by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Flight was broadcasted live: http://www.spacex.com/webcast/
This flight is an unique attempt to safely land a part of a rocket-carrier which is worth millions of dollars on an autonomous landing field in the Atlantic Ocean of a size of a football field. At the moment the expired rocket parts fall off over the ocean and it is not possible to use them again.
The Executive of SpaceX Elon Musk emphasizes that it is a test flight thus the possibilities of success and failure are equal. In the upcoming year more similar flights will be launched.
‘The largest part of nano-satellites’ production costs comprises of their launch into space. If it becomes possible to refill the first stage of the rocket with fuel and to use it multiple times, the cost of space flights will decrease significantly. This affects Lithuania directly because we are developing system of satellites’ orientation in space for planned space-based missions which gained huge interest from NASA’, said Vilkauskas, one of the creators of the first Lithuanian satellite LitSat-1.
According to him, even if the retrieval of the first section of the rocket failed this time, the experience gained and knowledge needed to help SpaceX to achieve its goal would be priceless.
Lithuania became a member of space community in 2014, when two Lithuanian nano-satellites were launched into space and the words ‘Lithuania loves freedom’ were broadcasted into the Earth’s orbit in the 28 February 2014.
Follow-up: Shortly after the flight, SpaceX announced that ‘it was very close to success’, however the landing of the rocket on the landing field equipped in the ocean was not successful. The section of the rocket landed on the field but hit it too hard.
