SpaceX may have just secured permission to do something it has been planning for years, fly NASA payloads on Falcon 9 first stage boosters that have previously been launched and landed. According to documents acquired by NASASpaceflight.com, NASA has internally approved the use of a "flight-proven" Falcon 9 rocket for an International Space Station resupply mission. The report suggests the first NASA mission to use a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster is expected to be CRS-13, the 13th SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station, though NASA and SpaceX have yet to publicly confirm this.

It's hard to overstate the significance of this approval for SpaceX. The company has been perfecting vertical rocket landings ever since it stuck the first one back in December 2015, and those SpaceX aerospace engineers have gotten good, successfully landing all 12 Falcon 9 first stage boosters this year in missions where a landing was attempted. Landing 13 of the year is expected this afternoon. (When the payload is too heavy, a Falcon 9 rocket doesn't have enough fuel after launch to attempt a vertical propulsive landing, and so the rocket is disposed.)

Now the company has found a handful of commercial customers willing to fly payloads on the used rockets for a discounted price, and three launches have been conducted with flight-proven first stage boosters. NASA standards of risk acceptability are significantly more stringent than your average commercial satellite operator, however, and only after a lengthy review of SpaceX's refurbishing methods, and three successful launches with used rockets, has the national space agency approved the use of a flight-proven Falcon 9 for an ISS resupply mission.

Although the Defense Department has not approved flight-proven Falcon 9 rockets for a national security launch yet, General John Raymond, commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, has suggested that the service will do just that in the future. Securing government contracts on reusable rockets will likely encourage hesitant SpaceX customers to launch on flight-proven rockets as well.

The approval of flight-proven rockets for NASA launches is a strong indication of the trust the space agency has come to put in SpaceX. Elon Musk's spaceflight startup hopes to launch NASA astronauts to the ISS for the first time next year, which would be the first time in history that people fly on a commercial spacecraft. Before NASA lets SpaceX launch astronauts—bringing human spaceflight back to the United States for the first time since the last space shuttle launch in 2011—the agency is going to let SpaceX load up astronaut supplies on a used rocket and deliver them to the space station.

SpaceX's 13th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station will be a big one, slated for launch on December 4, even as the company marches toward an impressive total of 19 or 20 launches before the end of 2017.

Source: NASASpaceflight.com

Correction: An earlier version of this article suggested that NASA had officially approved a flight-proven first stage for the CRS-13 launch. The report comes from documents and information acquired by NASASpaceflight.com.

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