Plans Return To Flight Later This Month

SpaceX plans to return to flight late this month after losing a Falcon 9 rocket in June due to a technical malfunction.

And this time, the company may attempt to land the Falcon 9 booster back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, rather than aboard a remote autonomous platform in the Atlantic Ocean, according to NASA.

Space.com reports that Carol Scott, who works technical integration for SpaceX within NASA's Commercial Crew Program, told reporters at a Cape Canaveral Air Force Station news conference Tuesday that SpaceX is considering the land-based recovery. "You know how they want to fly the stage back, right? Their plan is to land it out here on the Cape [Canaveral] side," Scott told reporters.

SpaceX would not comment on the statement.

Initially, SpaceX had planned again to attempt to land the booster on its ocean landing ship following the launch of 12 satellites planned in mid-December. But land-based recoveries have been part of the company's plan for some time. In February, SpaceX leased a former launch platform to create its landing pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

If SpaceX is successful, it would come just a few weeks following Blue Origin's successful landing of a booster that flew a suborbital mission in Texas. Following that achievement, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted "Orbital land landing next."

(Launch complex 39 image courtesy of NASA)

FMI: www.spacex.com