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(recode): Over the past year, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 missions have become major online spectacles, mostly because each launch has been followed by an attempt to land the rocket after takeoff. But the landing part of the show will be missing from SpaceX’s next launch, scheduled for January 30th. This mission will be an expendable one, according to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk, meaning the company won’t attempt to land the Falcon 9 post-launch.
It’s the first time in a while that SpaceX hasn’t tried a landing. The company has been attempting these “experimental” rocket landings since the start of 2015, and they’re becoming more and more routine. Ever since SpaceX landed its first rocket at the end of December 2015, every single one of the company’s Falcon 9 launches has been followed by an attempt to land the vehicle — either on a floating drone ship at sea or on a ground-based landing zone. And of those 10 attempts, seven have landed successfully.
But SpaceX is foregoing the landing attempt this time around because of the parameters of its next launch. The upcoming mission is tasked with sending a communications satellite, called EchoStar 23, into a super high orbit called geostationary transfer orbit. It’s a highly elliptical path that’s more than 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface, and getting a satellite to such an altitude requires a lot of speed, which eats up a lot of propellant during launch. On top of that, EchoStar 23 is a pretty heavy satellite, weighing in at more than 12,000 pounds. Heavy satellites need more propellant to get to orbit, so getting such a massive device to such a high altitude is going to use up a lot of the Falcon 9’s supplies.
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