US Army Billion Dollar Surveillance Blimp to Launch over Maryland

As reported by The Intercept: In just a few days, the Army will launch the first of two massive blimps over Maryland, the last gasp of an 18-year-long $2.8-billion Army project intended to use giant airships to defend against cruise missiles.

And while the blimps may never stave off a barrage of enemy missiles, their ability to spot and track cars, trucks and boats hundreds of miles away is raising serious privacy concerns.

The project is called JLENS – or “Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System.” And you couldn’t come up with a better metaphor for wildly inflated defense contracts, a ponderous Pentagon bureaucracy, and the U.S. surveillance leviathan all in one.

Built by the Raytheon Company, the JLENS blimps operate as a pair. One provides omnipresent high-resolution 360-degree radar coverage up to 340 miles in any direction; the other can focus on specific threats and provide targeting information.

Technically considered aerostats, since they are tethered to mooring stations, these lighter-than-air vehicles will hover at a height of 10,000 feet just off Interstate 95, about 45 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., and about 20 miles from Baltimore. That means they can watch what’s happening from North Carolina to Boston, or an area the size of Texas.

At one point, there were supposed to be nearly three dozen blimps. But after a series of operational failures and massive cost overruns, the program was dramatically scaled back to the two existing prototypes that the Army plans to keep flying continuously above the Aberdeen Proving Ground for three years, except for maintenance and foul weather.

As soon the blimps are up, if you’re driving on the interstate north of Baltimore, you won’t be able to miss them. They are 80 yards long and their total volume is somewhere around 600,000 cubic feet. That’s about the size of three Goodyear blimps. Or over 3,500 white elephants

“There’s something inherently suspect for the public to look up in the sky and see this surveillance device hanging there,” says Ginger McCall, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an advocacy group. “It’s the definition of persistent surveillance.”

Army officials claim they have no interest in monitoring anything other than missiles, or maybe boats. But JLENS can detect plenty more than that.

“A lot of people may hear radar and they picture a fuzzy green screen with little blips. But today’s radar is significantly more sophisticated than that and is in some ways akin to a camera,” warns Jay Stanley, a privacy expert for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Raytheon promotional material touts a recent test, when the JLENS radar “simultaneously detected and tracked double-digit swarming boats, hundreds of cars and trucks, non-swarming boats and manned and unmanned aircraft.”

Aerostats like JLENS aren’t limited to radar. If equipped with extremely high-resolution video cameras, they can see and record everything for miles, with extraordinary detail. In Kabul, for example, residents are used to seeing the U.S. military’s tethered aerostat—called the Persistent Ground Surveillance system—hovering above the city, capturing video of daily life below.

The Army insists that there will be no cameras on JLENS for now. In a test last year, however, Raytheon equipped one of the blimps with an MTS-B Multi-Spectral Targeting System that provides both day and night imaging, laser designation, and laser illumination capabilities.

The result: JLENS operators could “watch live feed of trucks, trains and cars from dozens of miles away.” They also watched Raytheon employees “simulate planting a roadside improvised explosive device.”

Maj.Beth Smith, the spokesperson for the JLENS program, says the Army isn’t planning to spy on anyone. JLENS “has no cameras, it has no video, nor is it tracking any people,” she says. “It does not possess the capability to see people.”

And while it can see cars, “for the purposes of this test, we have no intent to track any vehicles. Well, any civilian vehicles.”

A DEFLATED PROGRAM
Back in 2005, the Army planned to have Raytheon build 32 blimps at a cost of about $180 million each. But growing doubts and hemorrhaging costs, along with the destruction of one blimp in a collision, led the Pentagon to hit the brakes in 2012. There would be no more new blimps, just testing for the prototypes that had already been constructed.

That brings the price tag for the two remaining blimps to around $1.4 billion each, if development costs are counted. (Technically, there’s another duo mothballed in storage in the Utah desert, but there are no current plans to use them.) That’s serious money, even by federal government standards.

Raytheon trumpets the results of several successful tests of the system, including an August 2013 demonstration in which JLENS helped an F-15 knock a mock cruise missile out of the sky. But a blistering analysis from the Pentagon’s Operational Test & Evaluation office for fiscal year 2013 found that testing had been inadequate and that JLENS needed improvement in critical areas, including “non-cooperative target recognition, friendly aircraft identification capabilities, and target track consistency” – i.e. telling the difference between friends and enemies.

The testing report found JLENS failed to meet its goals for reliability, because of both software and hardware problems, that it was too dependent on good weather, and that it “did not demonstrate the ability to survive in its intended operational environment.”

Indeed, one blimp got totaled at its manufacturing and test facility in North Carolina in September 2010 after it was struck by a different dirigible moored nearby that had broken loose in a storm. The Army and Raytheon sat on the news for more than six months, until InsideDefense.com saw a mention of the collision in a GAO report.

The crash cost the Army another $168 million.

And the money keeps on flowing. Just two weeks ago, the Army awarded Raytheon another contract, this one for $12 million simply to keep the blimps maintained for the next six months

PRIVACY CONCERNS
Raytheon has tried to assuage privacy concerns in a few of the “Frequently Asked Questions” from its promotional material, which insists that JLENS cannot be used to track individual people.

“Radars can tell that something is moving, but because of the way radars work, they simply can’t determine identifying characteristics of cars, such as make, model or color,” Raytheon says. “Along similar lines, they can’t tell who is driving the vehicle or see a license plate.”

Maj. Nelson insists that “JLENS is an elevated radar system and has no task to monitor ground targets. It does not organically store any radar data.”

Even so, radar can track hundreds of square miles of traffic, and the real question is what the Army will do with that data.

Extensive redactions in the hundreds of pages of contracting documents related to JLENS in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by EPIC leave the true scope of the project unclear.

One EPIC researcher poring through the documents found an alarming passage. The Army’s contract with Raytheon, it said, will be evaluated based on its “potential to grow to accommodate new and/or alternative missions.”

Talk to blimp experts, and they’ll tell you what blimps are good for.

“They’re wonderful for staring at things,” says Ed Herlik, a former Air Force officer and technology analyst with a particular interest in airships. “That’s what the Israelis use them for.”

And it’s not just their ability to document what they see that’s so valuable; it’s the psychological effect. “If you put a camera in a sky over an area where you expect a lot of unrest, the area will calm down,” he says.

The ACLU’s Jay Stanley says the Army’s promises are not enough.

“I’m sure that the people who are giving us these assurances mean everything they say, but the nature of government programs and government agencies is that things tend to expand and privacy protections tend to shrink.”

What the program needs, according to Stanley, is oversight and it doesn’t have that now. “If we’re going to have massive blimps hovering over civilian areas, or within radar-shot of civilian areas, then we need some very ironclad checks and balances that will provide confidence that there’s no domestic surveillance going on,” Stanley says.

Federal privacy regulations currently don’t apply. “JLENS does not operate under privacy rules,” Smith, the spokesperson for JLENS, explains. “It is a military radar and as such carries no electro-optical or infrared cameras, nor does it have acoustic or electronic surveillance capability. There is no ability to ‘listen’ to cellular or radio traffic, nor can it optically ‘see’ any ground objects.”

For now, the closest thing to public oversight will be a media day at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds on Wednesday, where the Army will give reporters a chance to ooh and ah during an up-close look at one of the blimps, fully inflated with enough helium to fill about two million nine-inch latex party balloons.

But even this blimp isn’t ready for its much-delayed launch. And the other one isn’t even inflated yet.

Rocket Landing Experiment On Tap After SpaceX Cargo Launch

An aerial view of SpaceX’s rocket landing barge, named the Marmac 300 and unofficially christened the “Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship.” Credit: SpaceX

As reported by Spaceflight Now: SpaceX hopes to take a giant leap forward in rocket technology a few minutes after Friday’s scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 booster taking up nearly two tons of critical supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.

Burning leftover liquid fuel in its propellant tanks, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage will fly back to Earth after finishing a nearly three-minute burn to send SpaceX’s Dragon commercial cargo craft toward the space station. The descent of the first stage will occur just as the Falcon 9’s single-engine upper stage puts the Dragon supply ship into orbit on course for a resupply run to the six-person space station crew.

Friday’s launch is scheduled for 1:22 p.m. EST (1822 GMT), roughly the moment the International Space Station’s orbital track passes over Cape Canaveral.

The 14-story rocket booster will plunge back through the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, firing a subset of its nine Merlin 1D engines three times to a controlled vertical landing on a barge positioned about 200 miles northeast of the Falcon 9’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

Other rockets are designed to be expendable and are destroyed during their fall back to Earth.
Nothing like it has ever been tried before. Rocket engineers from several companies — including SpaceX’s rocket team — have flown vertical takeoff and landing testbeds on short hops, and the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters parachuted to Earth for retrieval by ships in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX has also flown Falcon 9 boosters to two successful soft water landings in the Atlantic after space launches in April and July.

What SpaceX is trying on Friday’s launch is more dicey, and company officials are circumspect when talking about probability of pulling off the feat on the first attempt.

“Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles,” SpaceX said in a post on its website Tuesday. “At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (2,900 mph), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.”

“It’s probably not more than a 50 percent chance or less of landing it on the platform for the first time,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO and chief technology officer, in remarks at a colloquium held in October at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the long run, Musk says reusing rockets is vital to expanding access to space. He likes SpaceX’s chances of achieving an intact landing of a rocket within the next year.

“There are at least a dozen launches that will occur over the next 12 months, and I think it’s quite likely — probably 80 to 90 percent likely — that one of those flights we’ll be able to land and refly,” Musk said. “So I think we’re quite close.”

After attempts to recover Falcon rockets by parachute failed, SpaceX turned to a propulsive landing concept in which the booster’s first stage engines would refire several times in flight to guide the rocket to controlled touchdown.

SpaceX engineers have fine-tuned the descent system’s design over the last year.

The first try to land a Falcon 9 rocket stage after a September 2013 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California succumbed to a high roll rate that starved its engines of fuel due to centrifugal forces. Engineers added more powerful nitrogen cold gas thrusters to stabilize the rocket’s roll during descent during the next attempt in April, which accomplished a gentle splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean before it crashed on its side and disintegrated.

The next full-up landing test in July — after a launch with six Orbcomm communications satellites — had a similar result.

SpaceX eventually eyes flying its rocket boosters back to their launch sites to permit rapid reuse, but the company indicated in mid-2014 it might try landing a rocket on an ocean-going barge by the end of the year.
In August, SpaceX filed challenges to a patent granted to Blue Origin, a space industry competitor owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, describing a concept to land a rocket tail first on an ocean vessel after launching from a shore-based facility.

SpaceX cited previous design work involving sea-based rocket landing pads before Blue Origin applied for the patent in 2009.

“The ‘rocket science’ claimed in the ‘321 patent was, at best, ‘old hat’ by 2009,” SpaceX attorneys wrote in one of the patent challenge petitions.

While SpaceX is on the verge of attempting a barge landing, Blue Origin has not disclosed any near-term plans to demonstrate the concept. The first flight of Blue Origin’s orbital launch vehicle is years away.

The patent dispute is still unresolved, but SpaceX is pressing ahead with the planned precision landing at sea.

A diagram of rocket recovery at sea from Blue Origin’s patent filing. SpaceX is challenging the patent. Credit: Blue Origin

Four carbon fiber and aluminum honeycomb landing legs are mounted at the base of the 12-foot-diameter Falcon 9 first stage. They will deploy to a span of about 70 feet moments before touchdown.

“To help stabilize the stage and to reduce its speed, SpaceX relights the engines for a series of three burns,” SpaceX wrote on its website. “The first burn — the boostback burn — adjusts the impact point of the vehicle and is followed by the supersonic retro propulsion burn that, along with the drag of the atmosphere, slows the vehicle’s speed from 1300 m/s (2,900 mph) to about 250 m/s (559 mph). The final burn is the landing burn, during which the legs deploy and the vehicle’s speed is further reduced to around 2 m/s (4.5 mph).”

The SpaceX landing pad — dubbed the autonomous spaceport drone ship — is officially named the Marmac 300. It is registered under the ownership of Metairie, La.-based McDonough Marine Service and carries ballast water tanks and repurposed underwater thrusters to hold position in the Atlantic Ocean.

The cargo barge was prepared for its rocket landing mission at a Louisiana shipyard, then it moved to a staging point in Jacksonville, Fla.

Photos of the vessel docked at the Port of Jacksonville showed technicians preparing the barge for departure to the Falcon 9 rocket’s landing point. Nearby vessels, presumed to be a tug and command ship, also showed signs of rocket-related activity such as the presence of high-tech space communications gear.

See photos of the Marmac 300 and support vessels before they departed Jacksonville.
According to data from the maritime tracking website marinetraffic.com, the Marmac 300’s tug and its likely control ship went to sea from Jacksonville on Tuesday.

McDonough Marine Service’s website says the Marmac 300 is 300 feet long and 100 feet wide — the size of a football field. Musk tweeted last month the Falcon 9 landing barge has extendable wings to expand the width to 170 feet.

“While that may sound huge at first, to a Falcon 9 first stage coming from space, it seems very small,” SpaceX wrote on its website. “The legspan of the Falcon 9 first stage is about 70 feet and while the ship is equipped with powerful thrusters to help it stay in place, it is not actually anchored, so finding the bullseye becomes particularly tricky. During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10 km (6 miles). For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters (32 feet).”

The Marmac 300 is emblazoned with a SpaceX logo in the center of a bullseye painted on a black deck.  

For Friday’s launch and landing experiment, SpaceX engineers added fins near the top of the Falcon 9’s first stage to add stability as the rocket falls back to Earth. The hypersonic grid fins are arranged in an “X-wing” configuration around the circumference of the launcher and remain stowed during liftoff before popping open on reentry.

Hypersonic grid fins were added to the Falcon 9 rocket to stabilize the first stage booster during descent. They will be stowed during launch and will deploy during re-entry. Credit: SpaceX

“Each fin moves independently for roll, pitch and yaw, and combined with the engine gimbaling, will allow for precision landing — first on the autonomous spaceport drone ship, and eventually on land,” SpaceX said in its online update Tuesday.

“Before we boost back to the launch site, and try to land there, we need to show that we can land with precision over and over again,” Musk said in October. “Otherwise, something bad could happen if it doesn’t boost back to where we intended.”

If SpaceX returns the rocket to Earth intact, engineers will examine the booster’s structure, propellant tanks and engines to determine what work is needed to refurbish the first stage and fly it again.

Musk has said SpaceX’s goal is the “rapid and complete” reusability of the Falcon 9’s booster stage. He said the rocket’s upper section, which enters orbit with each mission’s payload, may continue to be a throwaway component of the launcher until a new generation of rockets start flying.

But SpaceX’s quest to demonstrate a reusable booster will be restricted to a fraction of the company’s launches in the next few years. SpaceX officials say some of their flights, such as Falcon 9 launches with heavy commercial communications satellites and military missions, will not have enough leftover fuel to devote to a guided descent of the rocket.

When the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket starts flying — a maiden launch is planned as soon as late next year — more launches will have fuel to spare to get rocket stages back on the ground.

A launch is often one of the most expensive parts of a space mission for human crews, commercial and military satellites, and scientific probes. Saving the rocket booster and launching it repeatedly could dramatically cut the cost of spaceflight, according to SpaceX.

“The reason why there’s low demand for spaceflight is because it’s ridiculously expensive, and so at some point someone has to say, ‘We’re going to make something that’s much more affordable and then see what applications develop.’ That’s what has to happen,” Musk said.

Tesla Model S P85D Roasts Ferrari 550 In Unofficial Drag Race (Video)

As reported by Motor Authority: We all know the Tesla Model S P85D is one fast machine. Thanks to its dual motorsetup, the all-electric mover has a total output of 691 horsepower. Well that's not Hellcat-gloriousness, it's still pretty damn amazing. It allows the P85D to run from 0-60 mph in a tick or two over three seconds. One potential new owner recently found out what all those numbers mean in actual real-world driving.

Out testing the new P85D, the driver came across a Ferrari 550 Maranello. No slouch of an automobile, the shapely Ferrari is powered by a V-12 engine that produces nearly 500 horsepower and runs from 0-60 mph in about 4.4 seconds. That's quick, but it's not Tesla Motors quick.

The P85D quickly dispatches the Ferrari in what is a very unscientific test. Still, it shows just how insanely fast the Model S will get up and get out. Now, some of you might be saying that the 550 is an older Ferrari, and you'd be correct. That doesn't matter though, because the P85D will pretty much pace a 458 from 0 to 60, with the newer Ferrari only inching head past the 60 mark and then extending its lead.

The person who uploaded this Tesla video states that they daily drive a Lamborghini Aventador, yet find the Model S acceleration absolutely shocking. This potential owner has become a future owner, because they've stated they're ordering one. Pretty damn good marketing here for Tesla, because we want one too.

Swiss Daredevil Soars Above Dubai With Personal Jetpack (Video)

As reported by Newsweek: As the Christmas holidays near and many of us mull over paying the extortionate airfares to go abroad for the few days off, an ex-Swiss fighter pilot has brought the possibility of human flight closer - and he didn't even have to stomach an inflight movie in the process.

Yves Rossy, Guinness Book record holder and first man to fly with a jet-propelled ‘wing’, has collaborated the team of Gulf company XDubai to produce an exhilarating video of his latest and most exciting jet-pack powered flight. 

Rossy, nicknamed Jetman, moves swiftly through the sky, maneuvering across the path of a helicopter and a biplane with little but a helmet and the 55kg, two-metre wide XDubai wing strapped to his back.

Rossy has long been at the forefront of experiments with jetpack wing inventions, having flown similar devices across the English channel and above the Grand Canyon. Aged 55 he has flown all kinds of aircrafts and although his jetpack stunts have often included doubling up with others, such as his tandem flight with the Boeing B-17 at the Airventure show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, he has never had a jet-pack sidekick.

“To fly alone is great, but to fly with another guy is much greater,” Rossy laments in his latest video, shot above Dubai’s picturesque sand dunes shortly before Aerobatics Champion Veres Zoltán joins his side mid-flight.

The collaboration between Jetman and Dubai started in 2010 and their last big exhibition flight was Rossy’s death defying flight above Japan’s Mount Fujiyama. All of his daredevil exploits are on his YouTube channel, including his latest video.

He usually flies solo, but perhaps the Jetman team has found a co-pilot for Rossy.

“The best is yet to come,” the video promises, with both fliers suspended above the ground.

We know what’s going on our Christmas lists this year.

Jaguar Land Rover Tests 'Transparent' Pillars & 'Ghost Car' Navigation (Video)

As reported by The Car Connection: No question about it: modern technology has made cars much safer. Advancements like seatbelts, airbags, and electronic stability control have improved the odds that we'll survive a collision to drive another day and forced fatality rates to all-time lows.

But that technology also has a few drawbacks. For example:

• Side airbags and stronger auto frames have fattened up the pillars supporting the roofs of our cars, obscuring drivers' views of pedestrians and other vehicles.

• The amazing navigation technology on our dashboards still leaves many drivers slowing to a crawl and squinting to find their final destinations.

Jaguar Land Rover is testing something called "360 Virtual Urban Windscreen" that promises to fix both of those problems. Essentially, it's a souped-up heads-up display that also overlays vehicle pillars. As you can see from the demo video above, it consists of:

• Transparent pillars: When the driver starts the car, the front two pillars become see-through thanks to cameras mounted to the outside of the vehicle and screens on the interior of the pillar. That allows the driver to see pedestrians and other vehicles approaching from the left and right. When a driver needs to look behind the vehicle -- like when she's checking her blind spot -- the middle and rear pillars become transparent. (It's not clear whether they do so solely in response to an active turn signal or due to eye-tracking technology, and if it's the latter, we don't know whether it will work when the driver looks in the rear-view mirror.)

• Warning markers: Taking a cue from video games, Jaguar is testing warning markers that appear on the heads-up display, highlighting pedestrians, vehicles, and other obstacles.

• "Ghost Cars": When using navigation to reach a particular destination, a fuzzy "ghost car" would be projected onto the car's heads-up display, which the driver would then follow. That could make finding Point B -- and a parking spot -- much easier.

According to Jaguar Land Rover's Dr. Wolfgang Epple, the goal of this technology is to reduce accidents and make driving -- especially driving in crowded urban areas -- safer and simpler: "If we can keep the driver’s eyes on the road ahead and present information in a non-distracting way, we can help drivers make better decisions in the most demanding and congested driving environments." 

Sadly, Jaguar Land Rover hasn't indicated where this "Virtual Urban Windscreen" sits in the development pipeline, much less if or when it will debut on Jaguar or Land Rover vehicles. The underlying technology is there, of course, but for now, it seems more inspirational than imminent.

FAA Lets 4 Additional Companies Fly Commercial Drones

As reported by USA Today: Four companies won approval Wednesday to fly commercial drones to conduct aerial surveys, monitor construction sites and inspect oil flare stacks, the Federal Aviation Administration announced.

The approvals for Trimble Navigation Limited (TRMB), VDOS Global, Clayco Inc. and Woolpert Inc. come as the FAA drafts comprehensive regulations for drones to share the skies with passenger planes.

"The FAA's first priority is the safety of our nation's aviation system," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said. "Today's exemptions are a step toward integrating (unmanned aerial systems) operations safely."

Michael Toscano, CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, called the FAA action a positive step, but that the agency needs to complete its regulations to allow broader use of drones.

"We are excited to see the FAA grant these exemptions for commercial use of (drones) and to being to unlock the various benefits of this technology," Toscano said.

Aerial Mob was granted permission to conduct drone flights
for commercial film use in the United States earlier in Sept.

The latest exemptions from a general ban follow seven in September to film and video companies. The first commercial drone permit over land came in June, when BP oil company and drone manufacturer Aero-Vironment were approved to fly aerial surveys over Alaska's North Slope.

But the developing industry, with high-profile members such as Amazon studying drones for package deliveries, is eager to expand commercial uses. The FAA has received 167 applications for commercial uses.

At a House hearing Wednesday, the Government Accountability projected that FAA regulations governing drones weighing up to 55 pounds might not be finalized until 2017 or later.

"We agree that we need to speed this up a little bit," Peggy Gilligan, FAA's associate administrator for aviation safety, told the hearing.

The FAA is expected to release the proposal this month. But the proposal is expected to generate tens of thousands of public comments, which the agency must review for potential changes in its proposal.

In a letter this week to the FAA, Amazon said its indoor testing of drones must now move outdoors to practice in real-world conditions. Paul Misener, the company's vice president of global public policy, said the company might move its research abroad.

The FAA has been developing rules for drones since Congress set a deadline of September 2015. The agency set up six experimental sites across the country to learn more about how they operate.

The key safety element is to prevent drones from colliding with other aircraft, or with people on the ground. That means ensuring ways for other aircraft to detect and avoid drones, and for drones to land safely if they lose contact with remote pilots.

Up to now, hobbyists could fly drones close to the ground, and researchers or public-safety groups could ask for special permission to fly higher or in riskier situations.

According to their FAA applications:
• Trimble's UX5 drone weighs 5.5 pounds and performs precision aerial surveys by taking digital photographs.

• VDOS plans to fly Aeryon SkyRanger drones to inspect flare stacks for Shell Oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

• Clayco plans to fly Skycatch multi-rotor drones to survey construction sites.

• Woolpert plans to fly Altavian Nova Block III drones, which weigh 15 pounds and are 5 feet long with a 9-foot wing span, to map rural Ohio and Ship Island, Miss.

Drones "will change the way we conduct some of our existing business in the not-too-distant future, but more importantly, will create completely new and world-changing applications we haven't even thought of yet," said Jeff Lovin, a Woolpert senior vice president.

SpaceX Will Try to Land Rocket on Floating Ocean Platform

As reported by Discovery News: SpaceX will apparently attempt something truly epic during next week's cargo launch to the International Space Station.

During the Dec. 16 launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which will send SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule toward the orbiting lab, the California-based company will try to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a controlled landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The bold maneuver marks a big step forward in SpaceX's development of reusable-rocket technology, which the company's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says could eventually cut the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100 and perhaps make Mars colonization economically feasible.

Musk shared photos of the Falcon 9 and landing platform via Twitter late last month, ratcheting up interest in the cargo mission, the fifth of 12 unmanned resupply flights SpaceX will make to the space station for NASA under a $1.6 billion contract.

"Autonomous spaceport drone ship. Thrusters repurposed from deep sea oil rigs hold position within 3m even in a storm," Musk tweeted about the platform on Nov. 22. "Base is 300 ft by 100 ft, with wings that extend width to 170 ft. Will allow refuel & rocket flyback in future," he added in another tweet.

The Falcon 9 photo revealed that the rocket is outfitted with "hypersonic grid fins" to increase stability during a return to Earth.

"Grid fins are stowed on ascent and then deploy on reentry for 'x-wing' style control," Musk tweeted on Nov. 22. "Each fin moves independently for pitch/yaw/roll."

At a conference at MIT in October, Musk said that SpaceX would attempt to land the Falcon 9 first stage on the floating platform during the rocket's next flight. The next liftoff on the rocket's schedule is the Dec. 16 Dragon launch.

Musk estimated a 50 percent chance of success for the platform landing on the first attempt, but said the odds would improve on subsequent missions.

"There are a lot of launches that will occur over the next year," Musk said at the conference, which was called "AeroAstro at 100" and celebrated 100 years of MIT aerospace research. "I think it's quite likely that one of those flights, we'll be able to land and refly, so I think we're quite close."

SpaceX has attempted soft ocean splashdowns of the Falcon 9 first stage on three recent launches — in September 2013, and in April and July of this year. During the September 2013 attempt, technicians were able to relight the first-stage engine twice, but the booster ended up hitting the water hard. On the two subsequent attempts, the rocket stage made a successful, controlled descent to the water's surface, SpaceX representatives said — but there was no platform to land on.