History has been made: SpaceX touches down Falcon! Reusable rockets are here!

Elon Musk’s SpaceX showcased his dream of reusable spacecraft by making a Falcon 9 booster the first piece of an orbital rocket to land back on Earth, minutes after lofting satellites toward orbit.

SpaceX has successfully landed its powerful Falcon 9 rocket in an upright position, a historic first in the company’s bid to make rockets as reusable as airplanes. It was also the first mission SpaceX has launched since June, after one of its Falcon 9 rockets was destroyed in an accident while en route to the International Space Station.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Edmund Lee of Re/code about the launch and landing, and what this means for the private space industry.

For the first time anywhere, a rocket was launched but then returned and landed vertically on the pad.

Aside from the return on land, this launch was also different since it used an upgraded Falcon 9 that stands slightly taller than predecessors at 229.6 feet and has more thrust.

Some pretty cool images and video of the success have been offered up by SpaceX.

The Falcon rocket blasted off from the US spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying 11 small satellites into low-Earth orbit for communications firm OrbComm. Multiple space companies were competing to achieve this breakthrough, but SpaceX is the first to succeed in landing a rocket for a non-suborbital trip.

In a seemingly back-handed compliment to SpaceX, Mr Bezos tweeted a message of congratulations to Mr Musk’s company, saying: “Welcome to the club!” Both times, the boosters hit the platform, but the rockets couldn’t stick the landing. After the first stage of the rocket separated and the second stage took over to complete the journey into space, that first stage made a flip maneuver and slow descent back to Cape Canaveral to make a picture flawless touchdown just 10 minutes later. According to SpaceX, the explosion was caused by a failed strut in the rocket’s upper state liquid-oxygen tank.