SpaceX rocket launches 11 satellites and returns to Earth

When the rocket landed, a SpaceX commentator announced, “The Falcon has landed”. This video, which SpaceX released Tuesday, shows the vertical landing from the vantage point of a helicopter hovering nearby.

Bezos’ Blue Origin company launched their sub-orbital New Shepard rocket to roughly 100 km above the surface and then successfully landed it, back on November 23, 2015. Elon Musk said shortly after the launch that though the company will test it, this rocket will be stored away somewhere safe. Typically, first-stage rockets are destroyed after one use, making space travel extremely expensive.

Miriam Kramer contributed reporting. The deployment completed a 17-satellite array managed by ORBCOMM. And in an excerpt from last night’s mission footage pulled out of the stream by The Verge, we can see many of these men and women react to the Falcon 9’s historic landing.

It was the company’s first launch since its rocket carrying cargo to the International Space Station exploded June 28.

Musk was at the launch site in Florida where he said the rocket appeared to be failing in its landing, leading to a potential explosion.

The ability to land vertically is prized because it allows rockets to be reused, substantially reducing costs and increasing the frequency of launches. The 11 satellites launched via Falcon 9 yesterday join an existing 31 already in orbit, including six that Falcon 9 launched in 2014.

“I think we’ll probably keep this one on the ground”, Musk said, according to The Verge, “just [because] it’s kind of unique, it’s the first one we’ve brought back”.

The U.S. space agency NASA also applauded the feat.

Several earlier attempts to land the Falcon 9’s first stage on an ocean platform have failed.

The mission’s primary objective was the delivery of 11 satellites into a low Earth orbit constellation for ORBCOMM, a machine-to-machine and Internet of Things solutions provider.