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“SpaceX has finally landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea, after launching the vehicle into space this afternoon. It’s the first time the company has been able to pull off an ocean landing, after four previous attempts ended in failure. Today’s success is a crucial milestone for SpaceX, as it shows the company can land its rockets both on solid ground and ocean.” – The Verge

This is incredible.

Watch the video.

Just looks like they’re playing the launch of a rocket in reverse…

Bravo, Space-X.

About Space-X:

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company with its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, USA. It was founded in 2002 by former PayPal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk with the goal of creating the technologies to reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonization of Mars. It has developed the Falcon 1and Falcon 9 launch vehicles, both of which were designed from conception to eventually become reusable, and the Dragon spacecraft which is flown into orbit by the Falcon 9 launch vehicle to supply the International Space Station (ISS) with cargo. A manned version of Dragon is in development.

SpaceX’s achievements include the first privately funded, liquid-propellant rocket (Falcon 1) to reach orbit, in 2008;^[7] the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft (Dragon), in 2010; and the first private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the ISS, in 2012.^[8] The launch of SES-8, in 2013, was the first SpaceX delivery into geosynchronous orbit, while the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), in 2015, was the company’s first delivery beyond Earth orbit. On December 21, 2015, SpaceX successfully returned a first stage back to the launch site and accomplished a vertical landing, the first such accomplishment by a rocket on anorbitaltrajectory.^[9] On April 8, 2016, with the launch of CRS-8, SpaceX successfully vertically landed a first stage on an ocean drone platform.^[10]

NASA awarded the company a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract in 2006, to design and demonstrate a launch system to resupply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX, as of May 2015 has flown six missions to the ISS under a cargo resupply contract.^[11] NASA also awarded SpaceX a contract in 2011 to develop and demonstrate a human-rated Dragon as part of itsCommercial Crew Development (CCDev) program to transport crew to the ISS. – Wikipedia