News Tonight Africa

SpaceX for the third time will be attempting to land a reusable rocket on a barrage. This time, a new drone ship named ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ will be waiting in the Atlantic Ocean, taking over from the original barge, ‘Just Read the Instructions’.

The first two attempts to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship ended in spectacular explosions. But now SpaceX in its next attempt, scheduled for Sunday, seems to be optimistic.

SpaceX said it had identified and taken steps to prevent the sources of the previous two failures, first a lack of hydraulic fluid and second a non-responsive throttle valve.

The company even shared previously unreleased footage of the second crash on April 14. The first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket almost nailed the landing on the drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ in the Atlantic Ocean, near the Florida coast, before it tipped over and exploded.

On Sunday, SpaceX will try again with a new drone ship named ‘Of Course I Still Love You’. The goal ‘SpaceX wrote was not ‘just to produce cool videos’ but to radically reduce the cost of accessing space by producing a fully and rapidly reusable rocket system.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will first launch a Dragon spacecraft carrying more than 4,000 pounds of supplies destined for the International Space Station, told the aerospace manufacturer.

The launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is the company's seventh resupply mission under a commercial contract with NASA.

The landing, which took place on April 14, wasn’t exactly successful; the rocket stage did make it to the barge before blowing up.

The video shot from an airborne tracking camera clearly showed that the Falcon 9's landing legs deploying just before it touches down and tips over on the drone ship.

SpaceX said the rocket didn't stick the landing because a valve stopped responding to commands, making the engine continue firing longer than it should have.