SpaceX launch succeeds, with N.J. company’s satellites in tow

In July, Elon Musk, chief executive of Hawthorne-based SpaceX, said a preliminary investigation found that the explosion was caused by the failure of a two-foot long strut that held down a helium bottle in the rocket’s second stage. It is the first time that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX successfully recovered a rocket from an orbital flight.

“Welcome back, baby!” Musk wrote in a tweet after the successful landing. Now SpaceX has released new footage shot from a helicopter that was hovering near the landing zone, and it offers a fantastic view of the 14-story-tall rocket stage hitting its mark after returning from space.

SpaceX made a few changes to the rocket, including trying to land it on the ground rather than on a platform on the ocean, one of the things that made the earlier attempts so challenging. This is historic first in the company’s bid to make rockets as reusable as airplanes. Fully reuseable rockets could greatly reduce the cost of getting to orbit, making the expansion of humanity into space much easier. Welcome to the club!

The grid fins, located near the top of the rocket help steer it. As it nears the landing site, engineers light the engines once more to help guide it, while the landing legs are deployed. Last month, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced that its New Shepard rocket touched down earth safely.

“It’s a revolutionary moment”, Musk told reporters after the landing. “It’s the first one we’ve brought back”. Using lessons learned from those attempts, in January 2015 SpaceX attempted a precision landing on the drone ship, nicknamed “Just Read the Instructions”.

The company has tried to land rockets twice before but both times ended badly.

Musk also said in November that SpaceX flights had achieved a much tougher objective of reaching orbit.

Blue Origin’s rocket traveled vertically to a “suborbital” 62 miles above Earth.