SpaceX and Orbcomm have put out a press kit. A successful landing (along with Blue Origin’s recent successful flight) would be a nice early Christmas present to space enthusiasts.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Congrats to SpaceX obviously. Here are some nice photos of the landing. Here is Tim Fernholtz’s story.

[Update mid morning]

Here’s a detailed technical explanation from Spaceflight101, and Lee Billings has the story as well.

…has been postponed. Elon tweeted that their Monte Carlo runs had indicated a slightly higher probability of landing success tomorrow, and Orbcomm said that they wanted to continue to analyze static-fire data and allow an extra day to pre-chill the LOX. Someone at NASASpaceflight indicated that it might be that, though launch conditions are slightly worse tomorrow (80% chances of good weather as opposed to 90% today), it might be less wind, with less convection to warm the oxidizer. as Jonathan McDowell points out, this may be the first time they’ve ever delayed a launch to improve the chances of a landing, but the customer seems fine with it. As I noted to him, every aircraft operator takes into account landing conditions prior to takeoff.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the first flight, and I put up a post at Ricochet with links to my centennial essays from a dozen years ago.

Chris Bergin has the latest on the next flight, which has been delayed due to issues with the slush LOX. I wonder if they’re running into problems at the Cape that they didn’t encounter in McGregor, due to the different environment.