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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Successfully Lands After Space Flight
Bezos’ Blue Origin company launched their sub-orbital New Shepard rocket to roughly 100 km above the surface and then successfully landed it, back on November 23, 2015.
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This week’s Falcon 9 launch, the first since a rocket explosion doomed its June launch (the Falcon 9 is unmanned), went off near-perfect, with 11 satellites launched into orbit on behalf of Orbcomm, a communications company.
“Welcome back, baby!” Musk wrote in a celebratory message he posted on Twitter.
I have talked before about SpaceX and its woes in trying to land the first stage of one of its Falcon 9 rockets. Now SpaceX has released new footage shot from a helicopter that was hovering near the landing zone, and it offers a fantastic view of the 14-story-tall rocket stage hitting its mark after returning from space.
However, this will likely be dwarfed by the wider significance of SpaceX’s achievement, which has brought us a step closer to cheap, reusable rockets.
“SpaceX hopes it can recycle the first stage and use it again on future space flights”.
“We achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that also deployed 11 satellites”, Musk added.
SpaceX has been in the race toward the first successful rocket landing for some time, a race it lost just weeks ago to Blue Origin, the civilian space company run by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Welcome to the club!
The Falcon-9 craft touched down late on Monday night, about 10km from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. And shortly after the flight, the Hawthorne, California-based company released fantastic photos showing the Falcon 9 rocket as it landed. But the return landings of rockets could dramatically cut costs of space missions.
“Congratulations @SpaceX on your successful vertical landing of the first stage back on Earth!”
SpaceX launches satellites into orbit and flies cargo to the space station.
The launch had been delayed several times so SpaceX employees could fix glitches in the rocket’s redesign, which was meant to give it more power.
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Speaking to reporters, Musk said: “It’s a revolutionary moment”.