SpaceX booster to be tested at historic KSC pad

Several days after its historic Dec. 21 landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster moved into the shelter of the company’s new hangar near Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A.

SpaceX’s purpose in landing rocket stages is to reuse them, but this one — the first to deliver a payload to orbit and return to Earth intact under its own power — is likely destined for display in SpaceX facilities or perhaps a museum.

“I think we’ll probably keep this one on ground,” CEO Elon Musk said after the landing. “Just because it’s kind of unique, it’s the first one that we’ve brought back. So I think we’ll probably keep this one on the ground, but just confirm through tests that it could fly again.”

So while headed toward retirement, the 14-story booster does have important jobs left to do.

First, it will help show that SpaceX’s renovations to KSC’s historic pad 39A, which the company has leased from NASA, have prepared the former Saturn V and shuttle pad for Falcon launches.

The booster will be placed on a transporter designed to roll rockets horizontally from the hangar up to the pad’s stand on rails, then push them upright. Tests will confirm that mechanical, electrical and fueling systems are working properly.

“They have made huge strides in this past year to go get that (pad) ready to where they’re ready to start doing some processing,” said Carol Scott of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, during a media tour in early December.

Then, with the booster bolted to the pad, SpaceX plans to fire its nine Merlin main engines again at full thrust in a test, to show it could have been launched again.

That would be the first smoke and fire to pour through the flame trench at pad 39A since Atlantis blasted off on the space shuttle program’s final mission in July 2011.

Musk thinks another Falcon booster could be recovered and re-launched sometime in 2016.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.