Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral
node · earth
The concrete circle where orbital-class reuse was first demonstrated. Built on the site of the former Launch Complex 13, it received the Falcon 9 first stage from the Orbcomm OG2 mission on 21 December 2015 — the first time a booster that had helped place a payload in orbit was flown back and landed intact. The landing is a boostback burn, an entry burn to slow the stage through the densest air, and a single-engine landing burn timed so the vehicle reaches zero velocity at zero altitude. Because the pad sits a few kilometres from the launch complexes, a booster can be back on the Cape within about ten minutes of lifting off. The site matters to the space economy out of proportion to its size: before it, every orbital launch destroyed its most expensive component, and the possibility that this need not be so had been asserted for decades without being shown.
Read in · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 1
- Cape Canaveral Space Force Stationlocated_in
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 12 blocks · 1 evidence · 6 related
- Story
- The concrete circle where orbital-class reuse was first demonstrated. Built on the site of the former Launch Complex 13, it received the Falcon 9 first stage from the Orbcomm OG2 mission on 21 December 2015 — the first time a booster that had helped place a payload in orbit was flown back and landed intact. The landing is a boostback burn, an entry burn to slow the stage through the densest air, and a single-engine landing burn timed so the vehicle reaches zero velocity at zero altitude. Because the pad sits a few kilometres from the launch complexes, a booster can be back on the Cape within about ten minutes of lifting off. The site matters to the space economy out of proportion to its size: before it, every orbital launch destroyed its most expensive component, and the possibility that this need not be so had been asserted for decades without being shown.
- Knowledge
- Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
- Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral
- Connections
- Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
- A Falcon 9 first stage lands after an orbital launch
- Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)
- Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral
- Evidence
- Supports the fact that commercial orbital launches and commercial reentries from United States territory occur under FAA licence, and that a commercial reentry requires a licensed and approved landing site — the constraint that delayed the first commercial manufacturing return. V55 verification basis: FAA records were not retrieved in this session; no licence number is cited and mission dates are stated from author knowledge.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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/atlas?object=SITE_LANDING_ZONE_1&experience=SITE_LANDING_ZONE_1