Monday’s (June 12) launch of the Transporter-8 rideshare mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket marked a big milestone for the corporate’s workhorse vehicle.
Transporter-8 lifted off Monday afternoon from Launch Complex-4 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, carrying six dozen small satellites toward orbit. But essentially the most interesting motion can have are available the downward direction, for the Falcon 9‘s first stage returned to Earth for the 2 hundredth landing in SpaceX’s storied history.
SpaceX captured the moment on video and shared it with the remaining of us, posting a 30-second clip on Twitter Monday after the launch. The video features crisp footage of the booster coming down at Vandenberg’s Landing Zone-4 (LZ-4), just downrange of the launch pad.
The video shows an airborne Falcon 9 just above LZ-4, because the rocket makes its final descent burn to slow its trajectory before landing. Within the high-def footage, the 4 landing legs at the underside of the booster might be seen deploying, sequentially dropping from their folded stow against the rocket’s body before the vehicle softly touches down.
Rocket launch viewing at Vandenberg is often hit and miss, as the world’s facilities are sometimes covered in thick fog. SpaceX’s Transporter-8 launch was fortunate enough to lift off against the backdrop of clear skies, making the Falcon 9 return footage that significantly better. Even the dust kicked up from the one engine used for landing wasn’t enough to totally obscure the rocket’s picture-perfect mission success.
SpaceX first pulled off a rocket landing during an orbital mission in December 2015. The overwhelming majority of the corporate’s touchdowns have involved the Falcon 9, though its Falcon Heavy rocket has plenty of landings to its name as well.
