SpaceX successfully completed the re-landing of another rocket following the launch of its twelfth International Space Station (ISS) resupply aircraft on Monday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched at 12:31 p.m. Monday lifting off with a SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft carrying 6,400 pounds of equipment and supplies for research projects that is expected to reach the ISS by Wednesday.
Following the launch, the SpaceX aircraft’s first phase booster rocket successfully relanded at the Cape Canaveral Air Force station around 10 minutes later in another attempted test of potential reuse of the aircraft. This is SpaceX’s fourteenth successful rocket landing and sixth with the Falcon 9.
Materials on the capsule being sent to ISS include work for Parkinson’s disease research, a microsatellite for low-Earth orbit imaging, and a cosmic ray instrument to be used on the space station’s Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility.
The Dragon capsule is scheduled to return to Earth from the Space Station in September with 3,300 pounds of research and crew supplies.
SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket launch will take place on Aug. 24 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and will carry the FORMOSAT-5 satellite.