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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Successfully Completes Vertical Landing in a Spaceflight First
If it’s 100 times cheaper to send something into space, imagine how many more companies would be able to launch space ventures, ranging from satellites to commercial space flights.
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SpaceX aims to slash the cost of private space operations with such reusable components – but the company has not launched a rocket since one exploded in June.
The company’s Falcon 9 rocket failed during a resupply mission to the ISS.
Landing rockets is crucial to lower the cost of space flights as it allows reusability of the first stage, which is also most expensive stage.
On that occasion an unmanned Falcon-9 broke apart in flames minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with debris tumbling out of the sky into the Atlantic Ocean. It aims to resume supply missions to the space station in February.
Livestreams from SpaceX’s headquarters showed employees breaking into cheers as the rocket touched down at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Near the peak of its flight, at an altitude of some 200km, it propelled the rocket’s second stage – laden with 11 communications satellites – into space.
It is, no doubt, a big win for CEO Musk and SpaceX, but it’s not the first time when a rocket has landed successfully on earth after launching into space.
“Welcome back, baby!”, Musk said in a celebratory tweet.
But there was another first for SpaceX – the landing. The company successfully brought the first stage of the rocket back to earth, evidence that SpaceX can reclaim its materials – materials that cost millions to construct.
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The successful mission, capped by delivery of all 11 satellites to orbit for launch customer Orbcomm, unfolded in just over 30 minutes and marked a pivotal reversal of fortunes for privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, founded by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Historically, spent rocket stages have been unceremoniously jettisoned and lost at sea. Monday’s launch was the first since SpaceX redesigned and upgraded the powerful rocket.