Falcon 9 Becomes the First Reusable Rocket After Safely Landing Back on Earth

This accomplishment is a big morale boost for SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk, who is trying to develop a fully-functional reusable spaceship and get ahead in the race with Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin already managed to send a rocket into space and safely landed it back.

A normal spaceship uses ditching boosters that are being disintegrated by the intense heat of re-entering the atmosphere after liftoff. Falcon 9, however, made it all possible by using thrusters and a sophisticated navigation system to steer it from space to Landing Zone 1, a former U.S Air Force rocket and missile testing range located in Cape Canaveral, Florida, which was last used in 1978.

Everyone knows that a typical launch is a very expensive process, apart from the building costs of a spaceship, but after this successful landing, SpaceX became the cheapest launch provider in its category, surpassing its U.S or European rivals. According to the company, a standard launch costs around $61.2 million.

The rocket steered towards Earth with the help of small, foldable heat-resisting wings, and as it approached touchdown, lightweight landing legs deployed. Musk welcomed his “dream” by tweeting “Welcome back, baby” on his personal Twitter account and his fellow billionaire, Bezos, replied with “Welcome to the club,” as Bloomberg reports.

It’s somehow understandable why this landing was such a big deal for Musk, considering that in June another rocket was blasted into pieces mostly because a two-foot-long, inch-thick strut, located in one of the liquid oxygen tanks, snapped.

The Canadian-American magnate founded SpaceX in 2002 with only one goal in mind, to make it possible for people to live on Mars. Earlier this year, the company has been certified by the Air Force to compete for military launches with United Launch Alliance LLC, a project built by two of the largest aircraft makers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.