Bezos-led Space Company Successfully Lands Rocket After Suborbital Launch

“Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts-a used rocket”, said Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, in a statement. “Full reuse is a game-changer, and we can’t wait it fuel up and fly again”.

New Shepard is the first rocket ever to remain intact and land after taking off into space. In that operation, the launch and the landing of the capsule were flawless, but the rocket crashed, because of a failure with a hydraulic system.

The company has launched a You Tube video documenting the take-off, an animated stimulation of what the flight in space will be like and the landing. What makes yesterday’s achievement by Blue Origin so notable isn’t the launch – it’s the landing. At an altitude of 4,896 feet above ground level, the rocket booster (which can deliver 110,000 pounds of thrust) reignited to allow a controlled descent back to earth. The capsule made a parachute touchdown at 12:32 p.m.

On Tuesday, Blue Origin hit a major milestone by successfully launching and landing its New Shepard vehicle for the first time. With a fleet of reusable rockets, companies will no longer need a new multimillion-dollar rocket for every flight.

SpaceX is required to attempt its rocket landings miles off shore in the middle of the ocean in case something goes wrong with the landing. SpaceX were able to land several versions of its Grasshopper prototype rocket after launch, though that craft only flew to just over 700m in altitude.

Another US space company, SpaceX, which was started by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has been testing vertical rocket landings as well, but so far its attempts have been unsuccessful.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing Blue Origin was working on a reusable rocket.

“Rockets have always been expendable”, Bezos wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Blue Origin developed the BE-3 engine that launches the New Shepard.

Musk’s tweet, however, makes an important point: Suborbital flights are insignificant for his ultimate goal, which is to send and return astronauts to Mars.