Upgraded Falcon-9 rocket landed successfully after launch

On its previous flight in June, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket failed shortly after liftoff, destroying a supply ship intended for the International Space Station.

SpaceX successfully launched and landed a rocket Monday night, and it was carrying a New Jersey payload.

Monday night’s mission was the first time SpaceX has been able to successfully touch down the Falcon 9 post-launch. But more attention may be on SpaceX’s first attempt to land the rocket’s first stage back on Earth, although the company itself described the landing as “a secondary test objective”.

SpaceX have made several attempts to land rockets back on Earth, following its successful trial of similar tech with its Grasshopper low-powered rockets.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company has landed a smaller, suborbital rocket in November.

“Welcome back, baby!”, Musk said in a celebratory tweet. The Falcon 9 landed upright on land, where earlier efforts had used a floating landing pad on a barge.

The main goal of Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, is to establish a colony on Mars and to make the process of getting there cheaper.

Initially, the launch of ORBCOMM satellites was set for Sunday, but SpaceX had postponed the launch in order to improve the chances of a smooth and successful landing.

Nonetheless the Falcon-9 flight, which also went twice as high as New Shepard, is a milestone towards reusing rockets. SpaceX and Blue Origin have been racing each other in the aerospace business, creating rockets that would facilitate commercial space travel in the near future.

He later told journalists “No one has ever brought a booster, an orbital-class booster, back intact”.

The mission, capped by delivery of all 11 satellites to orbit for launch customer ORBCOMM, unfolded in just over 30 minutes.