SpaceX poised to test-fire landed Falcon rocket's engines

Update, Friday, Jan. 15, 8:25 p.m.: 

SpaceX completed a static fire test today of the Falcon 9 booster that landed successfully at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 21, the company confirmed.

The booster's nine Falcon 9 engines were fired on the same pad the rocket launched from last month with 11 Orbcomm satellites.

"Apparently it went very well," said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX vice president of mission assurance.

Koenigsmann confirmed the status during a news conference at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where SpaceX plans to launch its next Falcon 9 mission on Sunday at 10:42 a.m. local time.

Earlier:

SpaceX as soon as Thursday  aims to test-fire the engines of the Falcon 9 rocket booster that made a historic Dec. 21 landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The test less than a month after the landing would be an important demonstration of the feasibility of reusing such boosters, which SpaceX believes is critical to lowering launch costs.

In a change of plans, the company is poised to perform the test at Launch Complex 40, its active pad at the Cape, rather than at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A.

SpaceX initially moved the 14-story booster to a newly constructed hangar near pad 39A, which SpaceX has leased from NASA and is renovating to support launches of Falcon 9 rockets and the new Falcon Heavy, which is expected to debut this year.

SpaceX landing highlights promise, challenges of reusability

The recovered booster had been expected to help test newly installed infrastructure at the pad to confirm its readiness to support those Falcon launches.

SpaceX apparently preferred not to wait until it could fire the rocket’s nine Merlin 1D engines there, and moved the booster back to Launch Complex 40, where it lifted off at 8:29 p.m. Dec. 21 with 11 Orbcomm Inc. satellites atop the rocket’s second stage.

Continued below

The company had no immediate comment on its plans.

After the booster completed its ascent and separated from the upper stage on Dec. 21, it fired engines several times to fly back to a concrete pad at the former Launch Complex 13 near the tip of Cape Canaveral, an area SpaceX has renamed “Landing Zone 1."

The booster touched down 10 minutes after liftoff with an enormous sonic boom, completing the first return to Earth intact under its own power of a rocket that had boosted a payload to orbit.

Air Force anticipates busy year of launches and landings

Musk called it a “revolutionary moment,” and later said the rocket showed no signs of damage from the flyback and landing.

SpaceX plans to keep the booster for historic purposes and not launch it again, but wants to demonstrate that the booster and others recovered in the future could be re-flown.

The company on Sunday is scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying the international Jason-3 ocean monitoring mission.

SpaceX will attempt to land that booster on a platform stationed in the Pacific Ocean, a feat the company was unable to pull off in two tries last year in the Atlantic Ocean.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.