SpaceX may try a daring rocket fairing recovery tonight, too

SpaceX has also been working on a fairing 2.0, designed with recovery in mind.

SpaceX has long said it would like to make its entire Falcon 9 rocket reusable. Tonight at 6:27pm ET, the company may take a key step toward that goal by reusing a first stage of the rocket that launched nearly a year ago. But SpaceX may also go for another "first"—by recovering the payload fairing of its rocket.

In a Facebook post today, Steve Jurveston, a venture capitalist and SpaceX investor, wrote from Florida, "At the historic Apollo 11 Pad 39A for the first reuse of a SpaceX booster (and first attempt at a fairing recovery)." SpaceX spokesman John Taylor would not immediately confirm the possibility of a payload fairing recovery.

However, fairing recovery is a goal SpaceX has had for some time. Last April, after the first Falcon 9 landing at sea, SpaceX founder Elon Musk talked about recovering the fairing in the context of making launches low cost and routine. "As for things in the future, we'll be successful, ironically, when it becomes boring," he said. "There's still a few more things we want to try and do. We want to try and bring the fairing, the big nose cone, back. And that will certainly help because usually those cost several million (dollars)."

Should the Falcon 9 rocket launch tonight, the fairing would deploy at 3 minutes and 49 seconds after liftoff. Based upon a purported company document leaked on reddit, the concept involves stabilizing the two fairing halves in a horizontal posture, relative to the surface of the Earth with their exterior facing down, during atmospheric reentry. After each of two fairing halves reach subsonic speeds, they would deploy a parachute to slow the descent. Apparently, two helicopters would then each capture one of the fairings and return it to SpaceX's launch complex in Florida.

SpaceX has been working on a second-generation fairing—fairing 2.0—designed with recovery in mind. The company has been endeavoring to bring the new fairing into production, and it's possible SpaceX may incorporate the new fairing for a maiden launch tonight. After all, what would be more Elon than launching a new, recoverable fairing design on his first launch of a recycled rocket?