SpaceX 1st: Recycled rocket soars with recycled capsule

SpaceX racked up another first on Friday, launching a recycled rocket with a recycled capsule on a grocery run for NASA.

The unmanned Falcon rocket blasted off with a just-in-time-for-Christmas delivery for the International Space Station, taking flight again after a six-month turnaround. On board was a Dragon supply ship, also a second-time flier..

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from newly refurbished Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Cape Canaveral, Fla, Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. The rocket is carrying supplies to the International Space Station. (Craig Bailey/Florida Today via AP)

It was NASA's first use of a reused Falcon rocket and only the second of a previously flown Dragon.

Within 10 minutes of liftoff, the first-stage booster was back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, standing upright on the giant X at SpaceX's landing zone. That's where it landed back in June following its first launch. Double sonic booms thundered across the area. At SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheers erupted outside the company's glassed-in Mission Control, where chief executive Elon Musk joined his employees.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from newly refurbished Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. The rocket is carrying supplies to the International Space Station. (Craig Bailey/Florida Today via AP)

The Dragon reaches the space station Sunday. The capsule last visited the 250-mile-high outpost in 2015.

This time, the capsule is hauling nearly 5,000 pounds of goods, including 40 mice for a muscle-wasting study, a first-of-its-kind impact sensor for measuring space debris as minuscule as a grain of sand and barley seeds for a germination experiment by Budweiser, already angling to serve the first beer on Mars.

Ven Feng, a NASA manager, said he had "a little sense of deja vu" watching Friday's launch and landing of the same rocket he saw take off and return in June.

"Quite an achievement," he said.

This photo provided by NASA, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. (NASA via AP)

For the past two years, the private SpaceX has been salvaging as much as possible from rockets following liftoff. Rather than letting first-stage boosters sink in the Atlantic, as other orbital rocket makers do, SpaceX flies them back to Cape Canaveral for vertical touchdowns or, when extra rocket power is needed to propel a satellite extra high, to a floating ocean platform.

Reusability is the future for spaceflight, according to NASA's station program manager Kirk Shireman.

"The reality is, the business of space is dominated by launch costs ... so getting the costs down is important for everyone," Shireman said.

NASA flew its first reused capsule back in June. But managers waited until SpaceX had three rocket reflights under its belt, before putting NASA's station equipment and experiments on a secondhand Falcon. After extensive reviews, the risk of flying a reused rocket, versus a brand new one, was judged to be pretty much equal, he said.

Friday's booster recovery was the 20th for the company.

Jessica Jensen, a SpaceX manager, said the company aims to reuse rockets — and capsules — far more than twice. The only way to get thousands of people into space — the ultimate goal of Musk — is by drastically cutting launch costs, she said.

This was the first launch from the SpaceX-rented Complex 40 in more than a year. The last time a Falcon rocket stood at the pad ready to fly, in September 2016, it blew up during a fueling drill. SpaceX spent $50 million rebuilding the pad.

Friday's successful liftoff means SpaceX has now launched from all three of its pads — two in Florida and one in California — in the same year.

"This was a fantastic way to end the year for SpaceX East Coast launches," Jensen told reporters.

The space station is down to three astronauts until Sunday's launch of three more. The Dragon should arrive at the orbiting outpost a few hours after the fresh crew launches from Kazakhstan. Once back up to full capacity, the station will be home to three Americans, two Russians and one Japanese.

SpaceX — one of two private shippers contracted by NASA — has been making station supply runs since 2012.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia and Ukraine on Monday traded blame before the United Nations Security Council for the attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said have put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident.”

Without attributing blame, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said his agency has been able to confirm three attacks against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since April 7.

“These reckless attacks must cease immediately,” he told the Security Council. “Though, fortunately, they have not led to a radiological incident this time, they significantly increase the risk … where nuclear safety is already compromised.”

The remote-controlled nature of the drones that have attacked the plant means that it is impossible to definitively determine who launched them, Grossi told reporters after the meeting.

“In order to say something like that, we must have proof,” he said. “These attacks have been performed with a multitude of drones.”

Zaporizhzhia sits in Russian-controlled territory in southeastern Ukraine and has six nuclear reactors.

Fears of a nuclear catastrophe have been at the forefront since Russian troops occupied the plant shortly after invading in February 2022. Continued fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces — as well as the tense supply situation at the plant — have raised the specter of a disaster.

Ukraine and its allies on Monday again blamed Russia for dangers at the site, with the United States saying, “Russia does not care about these risks.”

“If it did, it would not continue to forcibly control the plant,” U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council, which met at the initiative of the U.S. and Slovenia.

Russia, for its part, said Ukraine was to blame for the attacks.

“The IAEA’s report does not pinpoint which side is behind the attacks,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said. “We know full well who it is.”

“Over the last few months, such attacks not only resumed,” Nebenzia said, “they significantly intensified.”

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the attacks “a well-planned false flag operation by the Russian Federation,” which he alleged Russia had designed to distract the world from its invasion of its neighbor.

The Zaporizhzhia facility is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world. Fighting in the southern part of Ukraine where it is located has raised the specter of a potential nuclear disaster like the one at Chernobyl in 1986, where a reactor exploded and blew deadly radiation across a vast area.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine in recent months has been able to make significant advances along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line crossing eastern and southern Ukraine. Drones, artillery and missiles have featured heavily in what has become a war of attrition.

Russia and Ukraine have frequently traded accusations over the Zaporizhzhia plant.

The most recent strikes did not compromise the facility, which is designed to withstand a commercial airliner crashing into it, the IAEA said.

The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

FILE - The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, is seen in the background of the shallow Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse, in Energodar, Russian-occupied Ukraine, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Officials at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant said that the site was attacked Sunday April 7, 2024, by Ukrainian military drones, including a strike on the dome of the plant’s sixth power unit. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)

IAEA warns that attacks on a nuclear plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine put the world at risk

IAEA warns that attacks on a nuclear plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine put the world at risk