Where, exactly, is the edge of space? It depends on who you ask. - 1
Published 21 Dec 2018, 08:48 GMT
After three failed launches, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk scraped together enough funding to launch a fourth version of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket. On September 28, 2008, Musk's gamble paid off when the Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to orbit Earth. The rocket is seen here lifting off from the Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands.
Photograph from NASAIn late 2010, the second flight of SpaceX's next-generation rocket, the Falcon 9, was literally capped with a milestone: a fully functioning version of SpaceX's Dragon capsule. For the first time, a privately funded company successfully launched, orbited, and recovered a spacecraft. While this demonstration mission wasn't carrying anything for science, in an elaborate nod to the British comedic troupe Monty Python, the historic launch did ferry a wheel of cheese into space.
Photograph by Red Huber, Orlando Sentinel, MCT via Getty ImagesWith Earth looming behind it as an epic backdrop, a SpaceX Dragon craft docked with the International Space Station on May 25, 2012. The Dragon, laden with supplies for the ISS and its crew, became the first commercially developed space vehicle to be launched to the station. On May 31, Dragon safely left the station and returned to Earth.
Photograph by NASAGetting a payload into geosynchronous orbit isn't easy. To achieve GEO, a rocket must travel so high, and so fast, that any satellite it drops there will orbit Earth above a fixed point on the planet's surface. On December 3, 2013, SpaceX's Falcon 9 Heavy pulled it off, making SpaceX the first private company to send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit.
Photograph from Space XEver since Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, his mantra has been reusability. On December 21, 2015, that vision became reality when the booster stage of a Falcon 9 rocket successfully returned to Earth and landed back on its launchpad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was the company's third attempt to stick the landing, and it paved the way for future successes.
Photograph by SpaceX Handout, Anadolu Agency, Getty ImagesNot every SpaceX rocket can feasibly work its way back to land, so the company built an autonomous drone ship, named 'Of Course I Still Love You', to give its rockets a place to set down at sea. On April 8, 2016, a Falcon 9 flight ended with a successful ocean landing, the first ever pulled off in spaceflight history.
Photograph from Space XOnce SpaceX demonstrated a knack for recovering used rockets, they took things to the next level: actually launching a previously flown spacecraft. On March 30, 2017, a Falcon 9 rocket powerful enough to send satellites into orbit became the first successfully reused launch vehicle.
Photograph from Space XIn its latest milestone moment, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time on February 6, 2018. The rocket, which lifted off from the historic launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, is now the most powerful launch vehicle in operation anywhere in the world.
Photograph by Steve Nesius, Reuters