SpaceX lands its first Falcon 9 rocket

Jeff Bezos’s private spaceflight company, Blue Origins, successfully landed a rocket in June, although it only went into suborbital space, not all the way into orbit.

On previous failed attempts, SpaceX tried to return its reusable rocket stage to a floating landing pad. It’s first stage is powered by nine merlin engines that produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust and burns for 162 seconds. A snapped strut in the upper stage was to blame.

Falcon 9 was carrying 11 satellites into orbit.

Founder Elon Musk has said the ability to reuse a rocket – which dramatically reduces launch cost – is something that will help revolutionize commercial space travel. “The Falcon first stage landing is confirmed”, SpaceX wrote on Twitter.

Leading Edge Aerospace manufactures the tooling to produce the booster’s landing legs, which allow the rocket to land safely back on Earth.

Before the rocket explosion in June, SpaceX successfully got its rocket back to the ground but watched as it tipped over during the landing attempt.

The Hawthorne, California-based company was founded in 2002 by Musk, who also serves as chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O), the electric vehicle maker.

SpaceX is back! The space corporation just managed the historic feat of launching a rocket and then sending it back down to Earth to stick the landing, perfectly vertical and only a few miles from where it took off.

Investigators traced the problem to a faulty support beam that held a bottle of helium inside the rocket’s upper-stage liquid oxygen tank.

“It’s a revolutionary moment”, Musk told reporters.

Creating a reusable rocket has been a major goal for SpaceX, and one it’s struggled with.