SpaceX Completes Successful Launch, Narrowly Misses Catching $6 Million Nose Cone

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket Thursday morning.

But the hard part came next: trying to catch the rocket's falling nose cone with a big net on a ship in the ocean.

Wait, what?

Part of the SpaceX ethos is "rocket reusability." By reusing as much of the rocket as possible, the company hopes to lower the cost of sending objects and people into space — and make it possible for people to live on other planets.
WATCH: SpaceX Successfully Launches Most Powerful Rocket In Decades
The Two-Way
WATCH: SpaceX Successfully Launches Most Powerful Rocket In Decades

So one goal of Thursday's launch was to catch the rocket's "fairing," or nose cone — the covering that protects the rocket's payload — after it's deployed and falls to Earth. (In the launch video above, you can see the fairing deploy at 19:56.)

 Source : npr