Liftoff Aborted: SpaceX Attempt at Historic Landing Delayed

Source: NBC News

BY ALAN BOYLE

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX had to scrub Tuesday's attempt to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying cargo to the International Space Station and make a historic rocket landing in the process.

The landing experiment would have involved bringing the first stage of the two-stage rocket down onto a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. Such a feat has never been done before. A successful maneuver would have marked a significant step toward making rockets more reusable and driving down the cost of spaceflight.

But even SpaceX recognized that the rocket stage landing, which was due to take place minutes after launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, was not the mission's main objective.

"The main mission is absolutely to get cargo to the station," Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance at the California-based rocket company, told reporters during a pre-launch briefing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

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