CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. >> NASA’s historic moonshot pad is back in business.
Hawthorne-based SpaceX has launched a spacecraft carrying supplies to the International Space Station today, its first launch attempt from Florida’s Cape Canaveral since one of its rockets exploded in September.
SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off Sunday morning from. It was visible for just seconds before ducking into clouds on its way to the International Space Station, with a load of supplies.
The Falcon 9 rocket launch marks the first time a rocket has taken off from Cape Canaveral’s Launch complex 39A since 2011, when NASA ended the space shuttle program.
The launch complex was also used for the Apollo missions.
The successful 9:39 a.m. E.T. liftoff was followed about 8 minutes later by the successful touchdown of the rocket’s first stage on a nearby landing pad not far from the liftoff site.
Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and Tesla, tweeted a snapshot of the launch Sunday.
SpaceX, which has made a habit of recovering its Falcon 9 rockets for re- use in future missions, will attempt to land the rocket back on land at Cape Canaveral. The company has made two such on-land landings in the past, along with five successful rocket landings at sea. Recovering and re-using rockets is seen as a major cost-savings for space operations.
The Falcon 9 rocket will propel a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. The spacecraft is expected to return to Earth March 21.
In January, SpaceX enjoyed a flawless return to flight in January from its West Coast launchpad at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The company hopes to launch twice monthly through the rest of the year because of its extensive backlog of contracted deliveries.
Plans for a Saturday launch were scrubbed due to concerns about the positioning of a engine nozzle.
The precautionary delay was the fault of “slightly odd” movements of an engine-steering hydraulic piston in the upper portion of the 23-story-tall rocket, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on his Twitter account.
“Standing down to investigate,” Musk wrote. “If this is the only issue, flight would be fine, but need to make sure that it isn’t symptomatic of a more significant upstream root cause.”
To be clear that the issue is minor and not an indication of a repeat of a devastating Sept. 1 SpaceX rocket explosion, Musk reiterated:
“Btw, 99% likely to be fine … but that 1% chance isn’t worth rolling the dice,” he wrote. “Better to wait a day.”
Musk posted on Twitter Friday that the company was investigating a “very small leak in the upper stage” of the rocket.
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