SpaceX Lands Flacon 9 Rocket Upright After Launch

Speaking to the press following the Falcon 9’s landing, Musk said: “It’s a revolutionary moment”.

The Hawthorne-based company announced that its first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket has landed successfully on earth after liftoff on Monday. This video, which SpaceX released Tuesday, shows the vertical landing from the vantage point of a helicopter hovering nearby.

In a seemingly back-handed compliment to SpaceX, Mr Bezos tweeted a message of congratulations to Mr Musk’s company, saying: “Welcome to the club!”

“The Falcon 9 rocket we are about to launch has higher performance than the prior version due mostly to increased boost thrust, deep cryo oxidizer and a much larger upper stage engine bell”.

Miriam Kramer contributed reporting.

“I still can’t quite believe it”, Musk said in a teleconference after the landing.

The Falcon 9 launches like any other rocket.

“All 11 ORBCOMM satellites have been deployed in nominal orbits”, SpaceX wrote on Twitter. This landing happened on land rather than at sea on a special concrete pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. But its attempts to land those orbital rockets upright had failed in spectacular crashes.

It’s a welcome end to the year for SpaceX, which had to deal with a debacle in June when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded shortly after takeoff, destroying a supply shipment intended for the International Space Station.

The launch had been delayed several times so SpaceX employees could fix glitches in the rocket’s redesign, which was meant to give it more power.

If it’s 100 times cheaper to send something into space, imagine how many more companies would be able to launch space ventures, ranging from satellites to commercial space flights. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, just landed the first reusable rocket but Musk pointed out that was a suborbital trip, the requirements for which are considerably different.

Space X aims to revolutionise the rocket industry with use of reusable components that will drastically cut the costs of private space exploration.