Rocket returns from space

The Hawthorne-based company announced that its first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket has landed successfully on earth after liftoff on Monday.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has its momentum back. This is historic first in the company’s bid to make rockets as reusable as airplanes.

SpaceX’s rocket deployed 11 satellites for telecommunications company ORBCOMM of Fort Lee, N.J. after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Last year, the Falcon 9 had exploded just two minutes after launch due to a defect in the strut.

A competing rocket company, Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, made a similar landing on November 23, though with a suborbital booster rocket rather than SpaceX’s larger, faster orbital booster.

Musk was at the launch site in Florida where he said the rocket appeared to be failing in its landing, leading to a potential explosion. Up until now, the first stage of rockets disintegrated and landed into the ocean. Once it leaves Earth’s atmosphere, the first stage separates after its nine rockets burn for around 162 seconds with 1.5 million pounds of thrust. Fully reusable rockets would slash the cost of getting into orbit and open up spaceflight to organizations that can’t afford it now. But, Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX is more complex than Blue Origin’s rocket as it’s created to go higher in space.

NASA learned this lesson the hard way with its space shuttle program, said Ray Sedwick, who teaches aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland.

Monday night’s launch is thought to be a significant step toward achieving re-usability on rockets, which would lower launch costs that could eventually lead to a commercial space industry.

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