Amazon’s Bezos taunts Musk over SpaceX rocket landing

It’s a welcome end to the year for SpaceX, which had to deal with a debacle in June when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded shortly after takeoff, destroying a supply shipment intended for the International Space Station. Blue Origin recently became the first to land a rocket after sending it to space, but SpaceX’s rocket went about twice as high and actually completed a successful, unrelated satellite mission before testing its landing capabilities.

It was the first time an unmanned rocket has returned to land vertically at Cape Canaveral and is seen as a huge success for SpaceX. A snapped strut in the upper stage was to blame.

Mr Musk has said the ability to return its rockets to Earth so they can be reused and reflown would hugely reduce his company’s operational costs in the growing but highly competitive private space launch industry.

As things are, conventional rockets are discarded following each launch, a process that is vastly expensive.

Monday’s launch was the first since June 28, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated just two minutes after liftoff. According to SpaceX, The ORBCOMM network uses low-Earth orbit satellites to provide reliable and cost-effective machine-to-machine communications to and from the most remote areas of the world.

Blue Origin, another billionaire’s rocket company, successfully landed a booster last month in West Texas.

For Musk, chief executive of privately held SpaceX, it was a moment of triumph after three previous attempts failed.

After several unsuccessful attempts in the past, the US-based company has finally launched its reusable Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch site. Jeff Bezos’ company managed to land a rocket after a trip to space in November, although it hadn’t traveled almost as far or as fast as SpaceX’s rocket. The mission involved launching SpaceX’s Flacon 9 reusable rocket and then landing it on a concrete landing pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.