This Monday the two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to be launched into space. Since the Falcon 9 already had two flights, this would have been the first SpaceX rocket core that gets three missions under its belt.
“Standing down from Monday’s launch attempt of Spaceflight SSO-A: SmallSat Express to conduct additional pre-flight inspections. Once complete, we will confirm a new launch date,” tweeted SpaceX officials this Saturday.
Canceled launch
There were already two major flights for the Falcon 9. First of all, back in May, it launched Bangabandhu-1 communications satellite for the government of Bangladesh, and in August it launched the Merah Putih satellite for PT Telkom Indonesia.
We don’t know for sure what happened, as we weren’t offered additional details about the delayed launch. However, we did receive an update from Elon Musk himself via his Twitter account: “Btw, SpaceX is no longer planning to upgrade Falcon 9 second stage for reusability. Accelerating BFR instead. New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive.”
Reusability became an important factor for SpaceX and they aimed to reuse the same rocket. Their mission was to learn how to reduce spaceflights costs by reusing the same items. However, it appears that SpaceX is no longer aiming to reuse Falcon 9 upper stages as well. The BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) is a huge spaceship-rocket that is designed to help people travel to Mars, as well as other places in our solar system.
According to SpaceX’s plans, the Big Falcon Rocket might launch as soon as 2020. This project is a major one and it is supposed to help with all the SpaceX activities. This includes transporting people through space and launching satellites. The Big Falcon Rocket also received a new design that you can check out online.
Daniel Kiss is the senior editor for News Lair. Daniel was working as a writer since he finished high-school, first for local papers then he started online, nowadays he likes to write about the latest games and tech innovations.
