SpaceX Moves Ahead of Competition After Rocket Landing

Meanwhile, ORBCOMM said in a statement that all 11 satellites were put in their respective orbit.

When SpaceX made the first ever “land landing” of their Falcon 9 rocket booster on Monday night, social media was flooded with footage of the event and with congratulations to Elon Musk and his entire team.

Nonetheless the Falcon-9 flight, which also went twice as high as New Shepard, is a milestone towards reusing rockets.

The Hawthorne-based company announced that its first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket has landed successfully on earth after liftoff on Monday.

A remodeled version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on its pad as it is prepared for launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the launcher’s first mission since a June failure in Cape Canaveral, Florida on December 20, 2015.

Many rockets use multiple stages, or engine sets, to reduce weight during launch.

Video images were soon cut off and the SpaceX live webcast returned to its commentators, who described the successful deployment of the rocket’s payload of 11 satellites for ORBCOMM.

The first-stage booster turned around and headed back to the landing site after the second stage separated and continued to orbit with the satellites. 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.

Talking about his company’s latest achievement, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said: “I still can’t quite believe it. I think this is a revolutionary moment”.

A Wichita company is part of space-travel history. According to SpaceX, the explosion was caused by a failed strut in the rocket’s upper state liquid-oxygen tank.