SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Successfully Completes Vertical Landing in a Spaceflight First

This video, which SpaceX released Tuesday, shows the vertical landing from the vantage point of a helicopter hovering nearby. His last Falcon 9 rocket, carrying cargo for the International Space Station, exploded just after liftoff in June.

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.

Minutes after blastoff, the Falcon 9’s first-stage rocket separated from its upper-stage booster, which continued on into orbit to release ORBCOMM’s satellites about 800 km above the Earth.

Miriam Kramer contributed reporting.

Across the country, SpaceX employees jammed company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, anxiously awaiting success.

The December 21 mission was the first attempt to land a first stage rocket on land after previous unsuccessful attempts to land on floating landing pads in the ocean.

Rival company Blue Origin, a space start-up founded by Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos, nailed a similar return rocket landing test last month. The historic landing of the first-stage booster back at Cape Canaveral could potentially lead to an era of cheaper space travel through reusable spacecraft. For the latest launch, the rocket stage flew to about 75 kilometers before turning around, leaving the rest of the rocket to deliver a package of satellites into low-Earth orbit.

Weather and other delays kept its comeback flight grounded this weekend, but SpaceX launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station without a hitch on Monday evening.

“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. We look forward to seeing SpaceX make a full trip all the way to the ISS again and stick that landing on their sea barge. However, it didn’t go as high as the Falcon 9.