Today, SpaceX, the private space exploration company started by Elon Musk, plans to do something it has been trying to do for years: Reuse one of its rockets.
Watch SpaceX try to make history today with its Falcon 9 rocket launch
Elon Musk’s company is trying to reuse a rocket that’s already been to space.
Photo by Roberto Gonzalez/Getty Images
The Falcon 9 rocket — which will launch today at 6:27 pm ET / 3:27 pm PT from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — has been to space before. The rocket brought cargo to the International Space Station last April, after which it returned to Earth and landed on one of SpaceX’s robotic ships in the Atlantic Ocean.
Today marks the first time SpaceX has tried to reuse one of its rockets.
You can watch the launch from SpaceX’s own livestream or live on YouTube here:
The move to reuse a rocket that’s already been to space is a potential game changer for the future of space travel. Rockets are typically too damaged after reaching orbit to be used again, and building a new rocket can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Eventually, Musk wants SpaceX to send humans to colonize Mars. If his company can figure out how to reuse rockets, “the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred,” Musk wrote in a 2015 SpaceX blogpost.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
