SpaceX Pulls Off First Reused Rocket Mission in Triumph for Musk

  • CEO calls reusability ‘a huge revolution in spaceflight’
  • SpaceX plans to operate rockets much like commercial airplanes

Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved an important milestone in space travel, relaunching one of its previously recovered and refurbished Falcon 9 rockets for the first time. The launch is considered a huge step toward making space tourism and space travel cheaper and easier. (Source: Bloomberg)

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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. The moment was 15 years in the making for Musk, who founded SpaceX with the eventual goal of colonizing Mars.