The upgraded, 23-story-tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with the nine-engine suborbital main stage returning 10 minutes later to a landing site about 10 kilometers south of its launchpad.
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Speaking to reporters after the launch, Musk said, “This is a fundamental step change in technology compared to any rockets that have ever flown”.
SpaceX made several attempts to land the rocket back on Earth safely, including two successful “soft attempts” in the water.
Before the rocket explosion in June, SpaceX successfully got its rocket back to the ground but watched as it tipped over during the landing attempt.
United States space company SpaceX has managed to successfully land an unmanned rocket upright after a launch for the first time in history.
But SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a much different rocket from the one flown by Blue Origin.
“Everything appears to have been flawless”, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said during a press call after the launch and landing.
Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, the top commander at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was quoted by a news agency as saying that the returning booster “placed the exclamation mark on 2015”.
In 2014, SpaceX twice reentered a Falcon 9 first stage from space and landed it in the Atlantic Ocean. Reusable rockets could cut the cost of private space travel, among other uses.
“Welcome back, baby!”, Musk said in a celebratory tweet.
Still, ORBCOMM CEO Marc Eisenberg seemed to celebrate both the launch of his satellites and the booster landing via Twitter Monday night.
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The company has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to send supplies to the ISS. It was also the second of its type of achievement in a month, following the landing of a rocket by Jeff Bezos owned Blue Origin.
