SpaceX Lands Flacon 9 Rocket Upright After Launch

The company has tried twice before to land a rocket, without success (see “SpaceX Claims Partial Success with Rocket Crash Landing”). The first stage rockets involved in propulsion of the Falcon 9 into orbit were safely returned to the launch pad vertically using propulsion, meaning that they can be reused. This video, which SpaceX released Tuesday, shows the vertical landing from the vantage point of a helicopter hovering nearby.

It marked a pivotal reversal of fortunes for privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which was founded by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. After the first stage of the rocket separated and the second stage took over to complete the journey into space, that first stage made a flip maneuver and slow descent back to Cape Canaveral to make a picture ideal touchdown just 10 minutes later.

A crane steadies the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster rocket as it rests on a landing zone near the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 22, 2015.

Creating reusable rockets is important for lowering the cost of space travel, which could make space tourism and a trip to Mars more feasible.

Plenty of other individuals and entities equally excited about space chimed in – including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose rocket company landed the New Shepard after a suborbital flight last month. “It’s a revolutionary moment”, Musk told media after the landing.

“We achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that also deployed 11 satellites”, Musk added. Some of those same engines performed a reentry burn to slow the rocket down, before lighting up again when the rocket touched down on the beaches of Cape Canaveral. 

The full 45-minute webcast of the rocket launch and landing can be viewed here.

At 8:29 on Monday night, a SpaceX rocket lifted off from Earth.

The company’s previous attempts, which involved landing the rocket on a floating barge, all ended in failure.

Musk says a Falcon 9 costs in the range of $16 million, but the fuel (mostly oxygen and a gas) costs only $200,000 per launch.