SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer space transports company, has made history by launching a rocket and then achieving an upright landing of it back on Earth.
Led by Elon Musk, one of the world’s most powerful and brilliant men in technology, SpaceX is a pioneer in Space Exploration and has been working on a reusable space rocket for the past several years. On Monday, it finally achieved this remarkable feat of launching a satellite into the orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket, and then making it do a perfect upright landing back onto earth a few minutes later; something that was thought nearly impossible, up till now.
11 satellites deployed to target orbit and Falcon has landed back at Cape Canaveral. Headed to LZ-1. Welcome back, baby!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2015
A high-res video from SpaceX of the launch can be seen below,
Achieving a perfect upright landing of a booster rocket to reuse it has been the main goals of SpaceX, because this could make Space flights incredibly cheaper as the rockets used to launch people into the orbit can be reused. For example, constructing this rocket cost SpaceX $55 Million and the first stage alone was worth $40 Million, but using it to launch payloads into the orbit costs a comparatively minuscule $200,000 worth of fuel.
The 23-storey tall Falcon 9 was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Monday night and the booster rocket returned to land 6 miles away at the Space Launch Complex 13, formerly a U.S. Air Force rocket and missile testing range , 10 minutes later.
Earlier in June, the company faced a major blow when its rocket exploded minutes after launch. Since then, the Jeff Bezos “Blue Origins” has also successfully landed a rocket that was only a sub-orbital launch. This though, was a full-scale launch of 11 satellites into the orbit and it is a miraculous achievement, almost like throwing a pencil over the Empire State building and having it land on its bottom end on the other side.
Source – BBC
