NASA approves Falcon 9 rocket reuse

NASA will deploy a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX on its upcoming mission to resupply the International Space Station, which had already been used in June. It is the first time that NASA is redeploying an already used SpaceX rocket.

After research, NASA claims to be assured that the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster can be used again without problems. “We get the same reliability with the reused booster as we would with a new booster,” Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, told Spacenews.

The space agency is using the first stage of the rocket for the SpaceX CRS-13 mission, which is scheduled to take place on December 8. NASA and SpaceX previously used the same rocket on SpaceX CRS-11, which launched on June 3. In both cases, it concerns a space flight with the CRS Dragon capsule, to provide the International Space Station with new supplies.

The permission to recycle the rocket only applies to this mission. On upcoming missions, NASA will separately investigate whether it is responsible to redeploy SpaceX components. The landing of the Falcon 9 rocket in June marked the fifth time that SpaceX successfully got a rocket back onto the Landing Zone platform. SpaceX already used a recycled Falcon 9 last summer when it launched the BulgariaSat-1 satellite from the Bulgarian TV company Bulsatcom. The same booster was used in January to launch ten communication satellites for the company Iridium into space.