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

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. This video, which SpaceX released Tuesday, shows the vertical landing from the vantage point of a helicopter hovering nearby. Following several years of short-range tests with its Grasshopper reusable rocket, SpaceX began incorporating landing capabilities in its Falcon 9 first-stage booster for official missions, orchestrating controlled splashdowns in the Atlantic Ocean. The company led by billionaire Elon Musk is striving for reusability to drive launch costs down and open up space to more people.

SpaceX isn’t alone in its clamor for rocket recycling. Although Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket was the first civilian-backed craft to successfully land intact, that rocket traveled to a lower altitude than the Falcon 9, making it an easier trip.

The rocket landing marks a huge accomplishment for the nascent private spaceflight industry, which has proven capable of delivering payloads into orbit and supplies to the International Space Station.

“Welcome back, baby!” Musk wrote in a tweet after the successful landing. “I think we’ll probably keep this one on the ground, just [because] it’s kind of unique, it’s the first one we’ve brought back”, he said. The first stage returned to land following launch.

The landing leg tooling was designed by Leading Edge, Johnson said, and is its most significant contribution to SpaceX.

“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. Safely landing rocketsi s also expected to herald improvements in propulsion that would make humans land and take off from Mars.