SpaceX will continue to land missiles at sea on January 17

After successfully landing the missile on the ground, SpaceX will do the harder thing: landing a rocket on the surface of the sea.

After making history in September, with the successful landing of Falcon 9 missiles on the ground, SpaceX will continue to do it again but will be on the sea. It was the SpaceX experiment that had failed twice before, trying to land Falcon 9 missiles on unmanned barge outside the Pacific.

SpaceX will not use the Falcon 9 missiles that had previously successfully landed, but will use the old version of Falcon 9 v1.1. This is the predecessor and has not been much improved compared to the Falcon 9. The Falcon 9 rocket has successfully landed as a newer version, upgraded to create greater thrust, making it easier to land. Return to the ground.

Testing landing on an unmanned barge outside the ocean will be much more difficult than landing on land.

Meanwhile, Falcon 9 v1.1 version has smaller thrust and uses less fuel. But according to SpaceX, testing the sea landing will not take too much fuel like landing on land.

However, the test of landing on an unmanned barge outside the ocean would be much more difficult than landing on land. Because the range of landing will be smaller as well as the stability of barges on the sea cannot be equal to the land landing site.

SpaceX's two previous maritime missile trials have failed. There are many reasons for these failures, such as unstable weather conditions, the uncompleted landing system at the time, making the missile unbalanced when it reached the barge face.

With the successful implementation of land-based landing test, the pressure on SpaceX will be even greater in this upcoming test. SpaceX and Elon Musk were forced to succeed to prove to the world that they had done what no other aerospace company had done before.

The next test will be conducted on January 17, the Falcon 9 v1.1 missile will also carry NASA's ocean surveillance satellite to be put on Earth orbit before returning to land on the sea. . And it will be launched from Vandenberg Air Base in California, instead of Cape Canaveral, Florida - SpaceX's most recent test site.