SpaceX closer to re-usable launch system after latest Starlink test

The fairing half was caught by its ‘Ms. Tree’ vessel, a ship at sea in the Atlantic with the purpose of recovering these components with a large net.

SpaceX says the other half had a “soft landing” on the water and it will be attempting to recover it too.

SpaceX can shave another $6.0m or so off the cost of its launches by re-using previously flown fairings.

The company’s whole approach focuses on re-usability, since the more it can re-fly from a used rocket, the less it costs on a per-launch basis.

Recovering the halves could also potentially prove the viability of a similar recover system for Crew Dragon.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on a recent call discussing the company’s successful in-flight abort test of its Crew Dragon launch system that it could one day use ships like these to catch the returning crew spacecraft with astronauts on-board.

SpaceX has caught three fairings successfully so far, so there’s still a ways to go before it can do so as reliably as it now recovers Falcon 9 first stage boosters.