It was exactly a decade ago, on December 21, that SpaceX entered the record books by becoming the first organization to recover an orbital-class rocket by landing it vertically back on Earth.
Coming seven years after the idea was first mooted by SpaceX chief Elon Musk, and following four failed landing attempts, a Falcon 9 booster returned to Cape Canaveral in Florida just minutes after deploying 11 Orbcomm OG2 communications satellites, remaining intact as it settled upright on the ground.
You can watch the remarkable moment via the video player embedded at the top of this page.
The breakthrough saw SpaceX take a massive step toward its goal of reusing first-stage boosters for multiple missions, allowing it to drastically reduce the cost of space missions as it wouldn’t have to build a fresh rocket for each flight.
The landing was huge news at the time, but these days the feat garners hardly any attention, so routine has it become.
SpaceX has gone on to use the Falcon 9 not only for satellite deployments, but also for crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station, as well as private crewed missions and flights to the moon.
Since then, other spaceflight companies have tried to emulate SpaceX’s achievement in landing an orbital-class rocket, but it’s not easy.
The U.S. rocket company Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, failed in its first attempt using its New Glenn rocket earlier this year, though it succeeded in a more recent flight.
A Chinese company, meanwhile, saw its rocket slam into the ground when it tried to land a booster for the first time earlier this month.
SpaceX used what it learned from the Falcon 9 to create the Starship megarocket, which should one day be heading to the moon and even Mars. Engineers have found a way to bring home the Starship’s first stage, called the Super Heavy, though the process is a little different to the Falcon 9. Instead of using legs to land on the ground, SpaceX uses giant mechanical arms on the launch tower to “catch” the Super Heavy as it returns, securing it just above the ground.
