Reusable SpaceX rocket lands safely after blasting satellites into space

“The Falcon 9 rocket costs about $16 million to build … but the cost of the propellant, which is mostly oxygen and a gas, is only about $200,000”, Musk said.

In its previous attempts, SpaceX had tried to land the rocket on ocean platforms, but with no success.

“Welcome back, baby!” Musk tweeted after the 15-story rocket touched down at a landing site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 minutes after launching from another point six miles north.

Ironically enough, SpaceX founder Elon Musk noted that the Falcon 9 that landed on Monday night will never actually be reused on another mission.

The SpaceX rocket that landed Monday successfully launched satellites into orbit.

SpaceX said a few tweaks likely helped the rocket achieve its mission and land safely. “Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold”.

Video images were cut off within seconds of the landing, and the SpaceX live webcast returned to its commentators, who described the successful deployment of the rocket’s payload of 11 satellites for ORBCOMM, a global communications company. Welcome to the club!

“All 11 ORBCOMM satellites have been deployed in nominal orbits”.

Last month, another spaceflight company, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, launched and vertically landed its New Shepard spacecraft during a test in Texas, but the flight only reached suborbital altitudes-a much less hard feat than vertically landing a rocket coming back from orbit. Typically, first-stage rockets are destroyed after one use, making space travel extremely expensive.

The latest rocket launched by SpaceX named Falcon 9 v1. The rocket can also carry more fuel, and the company has also upgraded the booster of the rocket.

The landing leg tooling was designed by Leading Edge, Johnson said, and is its most significant contribution to SpaceX. Earlier attempts this year failed, and in June an uncrewed SpaceX rocket exploded in midair.