“Welcome Back, Baby!”: SpaceX Returns Rocket to Earth

SpaceX signaled a new phase of the private sector space race on Monday evening, when it launched a payload of satellites to space and successfully landed a rocket stage back on Earth. It was the first time when a rocket launched a payload into the space and then landed safely on solid surface.

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.

This was SpaceX’s first launch in six months, as the previous one exploded shortly after launch while carrying supplies to the International Space Station in June.

It remains to be known if the Falcon 9 is reusable after its landing. Also, Falcon 9 must travel much faster than New Shepard (which is built for space tourism) to deliver cargo into space.

The company attempted to land the first stage of the Falcon 9, a 14-story tall portion of the rocket body, on a floating platform out in the middle of the ocean.

Before this year, rockets boosters were incredibly expensive feats of engineering that became incredibly expensive garbage as soon as they served their function.

Moments later, flight controllers and employees at SpaceX’s California headquarters erupted in cheers as television cameras showed the rocket making a pinpoint vertical landing at a former Air Force missile launch site located about nine kilometers from the launch pad.

SpaceX has more than 60 launch missions pending worth about 8 billion USA dollars.