SpaceX has finally achieved a milestone that it has been working very hard for. The company has tried to land its reusable Falcon 9 rocket multiple times on a floating barge on the sea after it’s coming back to Earth following its mission but it was never successful, until yesterday, when the reusable Falcon 9 rocket was landed back on solid ground after it sent up a payload of 11 satellites for a telecommunications client of SpaceX.
Yesterday’s attempt was a bit different from the previous attempts because this time around the rocket landed on solid ground, X marked the spot in Cape Canaveral, SpaceX decided against giving the floating barge landing another shot.
It was a particularly joyous occasion for SpaceX which had a disastrous launch in June this year, the Falcon 9 exploded seconds after it lifted off, and since then all launches were halted so that the company could figure out what went wrong and fix the problem. An upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket was launched yesterday which delivered the cargo in space with the booster stage being successfully landed back on solid ground.
Even though SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would be delighted that his space company has finally been able to this, the bragging rights now rest with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, as his space company Blue Origins has already done this a few weeks back, even though its New Shepard rocket doesn’t go as fast or as high up in space as the Falcon 9.