Jeff Bezos tweets a snarky congrats to Elon Musk after SpaceX landing

“It really felt like it was right on top of us”, Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, said during a telephone news conference after the landing, according to the New York Times.

SpaceX is led by Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Motors.

Third time was the charm for the private spaceflight company, which now carries the privilege of completing the first rocket landing during an orbital launch. Using lessons learned from those attempts, in January 2015 SpaceX attempted a precision landing on the drone ship, nicknamed “Just Read the Instructions”. SpaceX landed a rocket named Grasshopper vertically two years ago, but that one didn’t go into space.

Creating reusable rockets that can land and relaunch is considered a major technological milestone that will significantly lower the cost of space travel.

The flight was the first for Musk’s California-based company since a rocket failure in June destroyed a cargo spaceship being carried on a resupply mission bound for the International Space Station. Welcome to the club!

A few minutes later, the vehicle carrying the satellites separated from the rocket, and a backburn began on the Falcon 9 to bring it back toward Earth.

The SpaceX was able to achieved the incredible event in space history nearly a century after Wright Brothers set a plane fly.

The latest rocket launched by SpaceX named Falcon 9 v1.

The first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket reached the same height, around 62 miles, that the New Shepard rocket did.

Musk, who also runs the Tesla electric auto company, said he can drastically reduce launch costs by reusing rocket parts. Some of those same engines performed a reentry burn to slow the rocket down, before lighting up again when the rocket touched down on the beaches of Cape Canaveral.

Speaking to reporters after the launch, Musk said, “This is a fundamental step change in technology compared to any rockets that have ever flown”.