On YouTube, you can find a video of the most recent mission of SpaceX called CRS-18. This is Elon Musk's company doing a Commercial Re-Supply mission. It is a fascinating show that explains everything they are doing at the same time it is happening.
SpaceX is a subcontractor (there are two others that are prominent) of NASA. (Thank Goodness, we are getting away from the government trying to do the work that private entrepreneurs can do so much better.) SpaceX is the group that has figured out how to return their space craft to Earth to be re-used. It is really slick. This is the 44th successful return of a SpaceX rocket.
The most recent launch took off from Cape Kennedy by means of their Falcon 9 rocket (9 engines). The Falcon 9 takes the payload into space and it returns to it's launch pad minutes later - absolutely amazing. This is shown on the video.
Sitting atop the rocket was their Dragon cargo ship. It carried 80 tons of equipment and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) - mostly it was scientific experiments. Dragon was put into low-Earth orbit and will dock with the ISS in a few days. Then, it too will return to Earth to be used again.
I find this all very fascinating. SpaceX expects to be able to send men to the Moon in a couple of years. I wonder if I'm too old.
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