They stuck the landing! For the first time ever, SpaceX has landed a booster after sending its payload into orbit—on the ground.
Over the past year, SpaceX has tried and failed to land the first-stage booster of its Falcon 9 rocket twice on a drone barge in the ocean. (And on its third try, the rocket blew up on launch, which, yeah.) This time, SpaceX managed to land its rocket on a landing pad on Cape Canaveral, Florida. Being able to reuse the booster could help cut launch costs in the future.
So what's different this time? SpaceX upgraded the Falcon 9 with extra firepower—and some of the firepower is used to orient its first-stage booster as it falls back to Earth. Landing on ground also has some perks: Solid ground doesn't lurch like a drone barge on ocean waves, and the landing pad is a lot bigger than the barge.
A few weeks ago, Jeff Bezos inaugurated his Twitter account with the surprise announcement that his space company, Blue Origin, had launched and landed a rocket after suborbital flight. But SpaceX managed to deliver 11 satellites to orbit, which requires an order of magnitude more thrust, and land its rocket. SpaceX's booster is coming a hell of lot faster, and its landing much trickier. So Elon Musk's got this one. (For now.)
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