Splashdown! A sense of space deja vu

SpaceX

A recovery boat approaches SpaceX’s Dragon spaceship after today’s splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule was launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket rising from Florida, and at the end of its flight the Dragon parachuted down into the Pacific Ocean, 500 miles off the coast of Southern California. The splashdown and recovery echoed the way space missions were run back in the 1960s, during the glory days of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space efforts. No astronauts were aboard this time, but SpaceX founder Elon Musk said that if there were passengers in the capsule, “they would have had a very nice ride.”

Stay tuned for updates on the Dragon’s maiden space mission by checking Twitter (via @b0yle or @SpaceXer), or checking Cosmic Log’s SpaceX coverage.

URL: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/08/5613447-splashdown-a-sense-of-space-deja-vu