Elon Musk Rockets Back into First in Silicon Valley Space Race

After that incident, SpaceX took a six-month hiatus from launches and rolled out the upgraded Falcon 9, which has increased thrust, a much larger upper stage engine bell, and a deep cryo oxidizer.

“I still can’t quite believe it”, Musk said in a teleconference after the landing. However, the SpaceX vessel managed to land in one piece.

On that occasion an unmanned Falcon-9 broke apart in flames minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with debris tumbling out of the sky into the Atlantic Ocean. The Blue Origin rocket that landed upright in November made a much shorter sub-orbital flight.

The SpaceX mission sent 11 small satellites to orbit Monday night – its first mission since a June accident that destroyed a supply ship headed for the International Space Station. And it was not just practice.

SpaceX’s rocket deployed 11 satellites for telecommunications company ORBCOMM of Fort Lee, N.J. after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

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 stable surface was marked by a giant X.

For decades, Cape Canaveral served as the iconic launch site for countless missions to space, and now thanks to SpaceX, the legendary facility has also seen a rocket landing shortly after launching a payload into space.

“Here she comes back”, Eisenberg said via Twitter, sharing a photo of the returning booster.

It’s been a rocky year for SpaceX.

The landing is a milestone for the company; earlier attempts to land on a barge at sea didn’t go as well. Though SpaceX said the re-entry and softlanding was the secondary objective, space scientists at the launch time were keeping their fingers crossed hoping the mission would open a window of hope to land a first stage rocket back on the surface.

Bezos didn’t respond to Musk’s tweets at that time, but he clearly sought to put his own company’s achievements ahead of SpaceX’s in his “congratulations” on Tuesday, tweeting “Welcome to the club!”