SpaceX has revealed the first of four landing legs which will be fitted to the Falcon-9 Reusable ("F-niner"). The legs will be folded flat against the first stage fuselage on ascent, and will extend immediately prior to the powered vertical landing back at the launch site (CCAFS, Vandenberg or Brownsville, Texas). The ultralightweight composite legs will have a 60-foot span when extended, and will be deployed by high-pressure helium.

F9R (pronounced F-niner) shows a little leg. Design is a nested, telescoping piston w A frame. twitter.com/elonmusk/statu…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 2, 2013

SpaceX has confirmed rumours that it will attempt to return the first stage of the Falcon 9 v1.1 carrying the CASSIOPE satellite from Vandenberg in June. The stage will turn around on cold gas thrusters, perform a braking burn, and attempt to return to a powered "landing" on the waters of the Pacific. The plans were confirmed by Musk in a joint NASA/SpaceX telecon at the end of the CRS-2 supply mission.

The tests will be continued over the following several flights. Musk emphasised that he expected it to take several attempts before succeeding. If successful, he predicts that a Falcon first stage will fly back to launch site and perform a powered landing on land by mid-2014.

• SpaceX moving quickly towards fly-back first stage -- Newspace Watch
• SpaceX reusability trials coming soon -- Flightglobal

Rocketeer comments: When I initially posted the 'rumour', it got picked up by Nextbigfuture and Reddit, and nearly caused my bandwidth to explode...

Congratulations to SpaceX on a successful launch on 1st March of Falcon-9/Dragon from LC40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a cargo resupply mission to the ISS! Despite what appeared to be an issue with frozen oxidiser preventing full pressurisation of the Dragon's manoeuvring thrusters, the anomaly was quickly and successfully resolved, and at the time of writing, the Dragon is successfully docked with the ISS and the cargo of supplies and scientific experiments is currently being unloaded.

• SpaceX CRS-2 Mission Status Center -- Spaceflight Now

Footage of the Dragon C2+ spacecraft's approach on the R-bar (earth-radial) vector to the ISS, and subsequent capture and berthing by the SSRMS.

Footage of Dragon hatch opening and ingress:

Press conference with ISS Expedition 31 Flight Engineers Don Pettit, Andre Kuipers and Joe Acaba inside the Dragon spacecraft. The Dragon is scheduled to remain berthed until May 31, at which point it will be detached, and return for a splashdown off the coast of southern California.

Congratulations to SpaceX on a flawless launch of the Falcon 9, and separation and solar array deploy on the Dragon spacecraft!

The above video shows the entirety of the SpaceX livecast for the launch day. Liftoff occurred at about the 44:00 mark.

The third SpaceX Falcon 9 launch took place on 0744:38 UTC May 22, carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the COTS C2+ cargo demonstration mission for NASA. The launch window was described as "near-instantaneous", given the orbital mechanics constraints of reaching the International Space Station with sufficient fuel to carry out a series of test maneuvers. The spacecraft reached an initial orbit of 297 x 346 km x 51.6 deg inclination, deployed its solar panels and established communications via TDRSS.

Following a series of phasing burns, the Dragon C2+ was in a 380 x 396 km by May 24, and made a 2.5km flyby of the ISS, before following a 'racetrack' course ahead of, then above, then behind the ISS, before conducting an approach on the ISS 200-meter 'keep-out sphere'.

Rendezvous and berthing was slightly delayed by an issue with one of the Dragon's lidars locking on to spurious reflections from the Kibo Exposed Facility. This was addressed by adjusting the lidar's field of view. The Dragon reached the 10-meter hold point and was grappled by the SSRMS by US astronaut Don Pettit at 1347 UTC May 25, and berthed on the nadir CBM port of the Harmony module at 1552 UTC.

Mission coverage:
The following sites have excellent, regularly updated coverage of the progress of the C2+ mission:

• RLVNews.com
• Spaceflight Now: Dragon C2+ Mission Status
• NASASpaceflight: SpaceX Forum

The first attempt at launching the Falcon-9/Dragon on the COTS-2/3 cargo demonstration mission to the ISS was halted at T-0.5 seconds when monitoring software detected an unexpected rise in pressure in the combustion chamber of engine #5.

The fault was subsequently traced to a faulty check valve in the nitrogen purge system which was subsequently replaced, and liftoff is currently scheduled for the next available window on Tuesday, May 22nd at 3:44 AM Eastern.

• How One Faulty Nitrogen Purge Valve Forced SpaceX to Abort -- Wired
• COTS 2/3 Mission Status -- Spaceflight Now
• 4 Reasons why the SpaceX Abort was not a Failure -- Policymic.com

So far, this has been an impressive vindication of the vehicle health monitoring systems on the Falcon 9, and their ability to trigger a safe and near-instantaneous abort 500 milliseconds from launch when an off-nominal engine condition is detected. The ability of the SpaceX ground team to conduct engine repairs on the pad, and be ready for another launch window within 72 hours is similarly impressive.

Congratulations to SpaceX on the successful static test fire of their Falcon 9 launch vehicle, prior to the first COTS demo resupply mission to the ISS scheduled next week.

Elon Musk discusses his plans for 'affordable' round trips to Mars in an upcoming BBC Radio 4 interview.

"The whole system [must be] reusable - nothing is thrown away. That's very important because then you're just down to the cost of the propellant.

"We will probably unveil the overall strategy later this year in a little more detail, but I'm quite confident that it could work and that ultimately we could offer a round trip to Mars that the average person could afford - let's say the average person after they've made some savings."

Elon Musk describes his Mars vision in Scott's Legacy, a BBC Radio 4 programme presented by Kevin Fong. The programme examines the future of exploration. More details about the reusable Falcon 9 launch system will be unveiled later this year or in early 2013:

• Mars for the 'average person' -- BBC News