SpaceX announced on Friday that it intends on resuming launches at some point between late November and mid-December of this year, which the LA Times notes to be roughly six months since the loss of the company’s unmanned rocket.
The private space exploration company’s Falcon 9 rocket exploded back in June while en route to the International Space Station. With supplies intact, the rocket exploded while it was 27 miles high in the sky, just minutes after its launch sequence — marking what SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk referred to as “a huge blow” to the company.
Lost in the fiery explosion were more than a couple tons of supplies intended for the space station, the company’s unmanned capsule and the of course, the rocket itself.
The investigation into the June 28 explosion is still under investigation. The Los Angeles Times reports that the explosion cost NASA and the American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contracted SpaceX to conduct the failed launch, the FAA is expecting a report from the company come early November. The two administrations are also monitoring the firm’s investigation into the failure in order to pinpoint the cause, the Wall Street Journal reports.
For the company’s next launch, it plans on launching 11 small satellites into orbit on behalf of Orbcomm Inc., a company which offers MSM global asset monitoring and messaging services via its constellation of communications satellites.
As for the rocket that the company will use, it intends on launching an upgraded variant of the Falcon 9.
