When SpaceX gets it right,???? ????? ?????? it really gets it right.
The Elon Musk-founded private spaceflight successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth after launching a secret payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to orbit.
SEE ALSO: SpaceX makes launching a secret satellite and landing a rocket booster look easyThe landing — back on solid ground at SpaceX's Landing Zone 1 in Cape Canaveral, Florida — looked surreal against the backdrop of a clear blue sky just after sunrise.
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Because SpaceX was launching at the Cape and not on a drone ship in the ocean, the company was able to track almost every stage of the landing using cameras on the Falcon 9 booster and off.
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One camera even caught the first stage of the Falcon 9 as it made its flip in the air to come back for a landing after sending the secret spy satellite on its way.
We also got two shots of the rocket coming back to Earth the whole way down.
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These landings look incredibly cool, yes, but they're also key to SpaceX's business plan.
The private company wants to create a fleet of reusable rockets to reduce the cost of launching to space in the future. Instead of using a booster once and discarding it, SpaceX plans to use its rockets multiple times for many different missions, refurbishing them in between.
SpaceX already relaunched (and re-landed) a Falcon 9 booster that had previously been to space, and the company plans to launch more soon.
Video credit: Storyful/SpaceX
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