SpaceX aims to launch a new era in modern rocket science by landing a key part of its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.

The California-based company has given itself just a 50-50 chance of success in the bid to guide the powerful first stage of the rocket to a floating platform about 322 kilometres off the coast of northern Florida.

The rocket launches from Cape Canaveral tomorrow morning.

It hopes the effort will transform the space industry into one that reuses its assets much the way commercial airlines fly the same planes again and again.