The U.S. Air Force says the demonstration of an automated safety system on last week’s Falcon 9 rocket launch will slash and costs and hasten turnarounds between missions from military-operated ranges in Florida and California.
Hurricane Matthew slammed NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, home to multiple launch pads and spacecraft assembly facilities, with wind gusts of more than 100 mph early Friday, but there were no immediate reports of significant damage at the spaceport as the storm passed just offshore.
Engineers scrambled to keep NASA’s billion-dollar asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on track for its launch last week in the aftermath of an explosion a mile away at SpaceX’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX plans to set up landing pads on abandoned launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base in a step toward the company’s vision for eventual recovery and reuse of rocket boosters.
Up to 24 launches are planned from Cape Canaveral in 2015, thanks to jam-packed manifests for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to send up satellites for the U.S. military, NASA and commercial telecom operators.