SpaceX could do something amazing on Saturday.
The Elon Musk-founded private spaceflight company is planning to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a refurbished, uncrewed Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, and then land the first stage of the rocket back on solid ground.
If successful, this will mark the first time SpaceX has reused one of its capsules. The re-flight will also propel the company into an exclusive club.
"NASA’s space shuttle orbiters, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B, and the Soviet Union’s VA spacecraft were all reused on orbital missions," Robert Pearlman, space historian and founder of collectspace.com, said.
"The first orbital-class spacecraft to be reused, however, was a NASA Gemini capsule that was launched on two suborbital flights (the second flight in 1966 was a test for the U.S. Air Force’s planned Manned Orbiting Laboratory program)."
If the Dragon mission -- which is being launched to deliver tons of supplies to the astronauts on the Space Station -- succeeds, SpaceX will also join that special group of spacecraft providers.
The launch is expected to occur at 5:07 p.m. ET on Saturday, with the landing happening about 10 minutes after that. You can watch it live via NASA in the window below:
Bad weather is a concern for the Saturday launch. At the moment, it looks like there's about a 60 percent chance of fair weather at the time of liftoff. The launch was already called off once before on Thursday when lightning at the launch site became a concern.
The planned rocket landing, if it goes off without a hitch, will mark the fifth time SpaceX has landed a booster back at a pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the company's 11th landing overall. (The others occurred on the company's drone ships at sea.)
These kinds of spacecraft and rocket reusability tests are staged to help the company perfect what they see as the future of space exploration.
That future hinges upon the idea that the cost of spaceflight can be reduced by re-launching and landing rockets and spacecraft multiple times for reuse.
Other companies like Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance are also incorporating aspects of reusability into their business plans, so SpaceX isn't alone in their vision of the industry.
