Hi friends in space, it’s Erik von Ancken back from an early Saturday morning visit to the Kennedy Space Center for the launch of Crew-7.
We were wide awake at 3:35 a.m. - in fact I was in the middle of a sentence on live TV when the ground suddenly shook!
About eight minutes after the four astronauts lifted off from Pad 39A headed for the Space Station, SpaceX went for another first: bringing the Falcon 9 rocket booster back to the Space Coast.
Many, many times after a cargo launch SpaceX has landed the first stage of the rocket at the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, but never after an astronaut launch. Often SpaceX would aim to put the spent booster on a barge in the Atlantic after it separated from the second stage of the rocket and the Dragon Crew Capsule.
As you’d expect, it takes more fuel to fly the booster back from out over the ocean to the CCSFS and SpaceX either didn’t have the extra fuel to spare or didn’t want to take a chance. First priority on an astronaut launch, of course, is the astronauts and inserting them safely into orbit, no matter how much fuel it takes. A booster landing is a nice bonus but it’s a secondary and unnecessary objective.
Early Saturday morning though, SpaceX went for it. All of us standing at the KSC press site spotted the booster falling back to Earth and then lighting up the launch pad as the engines fired one last time to slow the rocket for a pillow-soft touchdown... but we heard nothing, until immediately after the rocket booster landed, so much so it caught us off guard.
I had just started to wonder where the sonic boom was... when... BOOM!!!
If you want to chuckle, check out my reaction at 8 minutes and 7 seconds into the video.
Good thing the camera wasn’t on me because I jumped! Seems like the action never stops on the Space Coast lately, right?
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👋 Here’s a little bit about me.
I’ve covered space for News 6 beginning in the days after Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in 2003.
Since then, I’ve been at Kennedy Space Center reporting on nearly every space shuttle launch and the retirement of the shuttle program with Atlantis’ final flight in 2011.
I’ve climbed aboard Shuttle Atlantis’ flight deck and flown twice with the Air Force Thunderbirds in an F-16.
I’ve also reported on the rebirth of KSC and the Space Coast, covering the first SpaceX cargo missions to the International Space Station, leading up to the first crewed launch to the ISS in nearly a decade when the newest American-made rocket with American astronauts blasted off from American soil.
And I continue to track NASA’s SLS as the Artemis I Moon Rocket is readied for rollout and first flight.
I was at KSC when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first announced his plans to bring his Blue Origin space tourism company to the Space Coast and reported from Long Beach, Calif., on up-and-coming aerospace tech, including Virgin Orbit.
I’ve interviewed Elon Musk one-on-one, and I very much look forward to speaking with you every week.
