Elon Musk’s SpaceX flew a reused rocket to space and back again, a key milestone to reducing launch costs and one day enabling people to live on other planets.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rumbled aloft, deposited a customer’s satellite into orbit, stuck its landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean and drew raucous cheers from the crowd gathered Thursday at the company’s California headquarters.
So they demonstrated that it can be done, something once thought impossible. It took four months to get the rocket stage inspected, tested, and prepared for a return flight, but they hope to pare that down to a little over a day.
