SpaceX wants to lease more land at Port Canaveral for Falcon 9 first stages

SpaceX wants to lease more land at Port Canaveral for rocket-related storage needs, according to documents previewing a future Canaveral Port Authority Board of Commissioners meeting.

Commissioners on June 28 will consider a four-year, nine-month lease with SpaceX for nearly 2.2 acres of vacant land at the corner of State Road 401 and Payne Way, which sits next to the company's already operational facility for previously flown Falcon 9 first stages. Commissioners in March agreed to the existing lease at 620 Magellan Road on the north side of the port.

SpaceX uses the hangar and other facilities to process Falcon 9 first stages for future reuse after they land at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zone 1 or on the company's "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship. The new hangar would add 67,222 square feet of additional working space to the equation.

The lease, reviewed and approved by the port's attorney and general counsel, would require SpaceX to pay $236,797 a year, or $19,733 a month, before a three percent annual increase. The Hawthorne, California-based company currently pays $35,181 for the existing 4-acre parcel, which will increase to $50,639 by the fifth year of the lease.

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SpaceX has been successfully recovering first stages since 2015, first at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, then on the drone ship. First stages would ideally always land at the Cape, but fuel constraints sometimes require a drone ship landing farther out to sea.

Eleven of the boosters, which stand 162 feet tall on landing legs or 156 feet tall without them, have so far been successfully landed and recovered. CEO Elon Musk sees rocket reusability as the key to lowering launch costs and increasing access to space.

For first stages that are recovered via drone ship, the berth at Port Canaveral is about 2,000 feet from SpaceX's first facility at 620 Magellan Road.

A previously flown Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A at 3:10 p.m. Friday. BulgariaSat-1, the country's first geostationary satellite designed to deliver television programming, was successfully delivered to orbit.

The first stage landed on the "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship about eight minutes after launch and should arrive at Port Canaveral for processing by next week.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter at @EmreKelly and on Facebook at Emre Kelly.