This SpaceX veteran says the next big thing in space is satellites that return to Earth

Automated excerpt

Bringing anything back from space requires diving back into Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly high speeds, which generates extreme heat. Because that weight makes getting to space on a rocket more expensive, most spacecraft aren’t designed for a return journey. That calculus typically limits reentry to vehicles that carry humans, like the Space Shuttle (which saw one vehicle lost due to the extreme environment of reentry) or SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.

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