Just like Bezos, Musk’s SpaceX Lands a Rocket

Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully landed a rocket after shooting a payload into orbit. This is the first time a rocket has launched a payload into orbit and returned safely to Earth. The payload consists of 11 ORBCOMM communications satellites. Orbcomm satellites are low Earth orbit communications satellites operated by the United States satellite communications company, Orbcomm.

The Falcon 9 rocket, 23 stories high and the most expensive part of the rocket, has 9 engines and is capable of reaching more than 5,000km per hour. Launching at 8:29 p.m., the first stage of the rocket, housing most of the fuel, reached this speed when it separated from the second stage. After performing an aerial U-turn and upon re-entry, the rocket fired up again to stabilize and land upright on the landing pad at Cape Canaveral.

"The Falcon has landed," a SpaceX commentator said, "USA! USA!"

Normally, rockets are designed to crash into the ocean after liftoff. However, Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, have been working on building rockets which are able to land after the mission is over. Once the rockets land safely on Earth, they can be re-used for other spaceflights through refueling.

Although the flight was scheduled for take-off on Sunday, it was delayed due to technical issues. Specifically, a Monte Carlo simulation run showed that there are 80% better chances of landing on Monday. Monte Carlo algorithms rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results.

After this successful launch, Musk says this rocket will be stored and tested for further studies. There are plans for another similar launch “sometime next year”.

“11 satellites deployed to target orbit and Falcon has landed back at Cape Canaveral. Headed to LZ-1. Welcome back, baby!” Must tweeted.

In June, a Falcon 9 rocket destined to deliver 2,300kgs of supplies, food, and science experiments to the International Space Station, exploded in mid-air 2 minutes and 19 seconds after liftoff, following 18 successful missions. The crash was due to overpressure in the rocket’s liquid oxygen tank caused by a faulty strut, and has upgraded the rocket to fix the flaw.

In November, Blue Origin, a rocket company started by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, successfully launched and landed the New Shepard rocket after launching a capsule that goes to 100.5 km above the earth’s surface, just the tip of ‘official’ outer space. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launched SpaceShipTwo that crashed in 2014, killing one of the pilots onboard.