As reported some hours ago, Elon Musk’s SpaceX tried to land its most powerful Falcon 9 rocket in an upright position after launch.
It worked. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket was brought back to land after helping to launch 11 communications satellites to orbit.
The objective of the event was to revolutionize the rocket industry, which currently loses many millions of dollars in jettisoned machinery and sophisticated rocket components after each launch.
The rocket stage reached an altitude of 200km before returning back to earth.
Landing from helo https://t.co/dYomRtG0Xs
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 22, 2015
This is not the first attempt as SpaceX has attempted to land the boost stage of the Falcon 9 on a drone ship in the Atlantic on previous flights, but those tests weren’t successful.
Here is Elon’s tweet welcoming the falcon 9 back.
11 satellites deployed to target orbit and Falcon has landed back at Cape Canaveral. Headed to LZ-1. Welcome back, baby!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2015
Here are some other tweets about the feat.
What a day in spaceflight. Spacewalk, Progress launch, and now @SpaceX has a great launch and recovers the first stage. 2015. Amazing work.
— Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) December 22, 2015
However this isn’t the first successful reusable rocket test of the year.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin also landed its rocket back on Earth after flying a test capsule to the edge of space — close to 100 km in altitude. (SpaceX has also launched and landed its one-engine Grasshopper reusable rocket, though it never reached space.)
This is what Jeff had to say about this feat.
Congrats @SpaceX on landing Falcon's suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) December 22, 2015
If you missed the live webcast, here is it below:
