The Elon Musk-owned SpaceX has landed a rocket booster after sending its payload into orbit.
Over the past year, the company has tried and failed to land the first-stage booster of its Falcon 9 rocket twice on a drone barge in the ocean. On its third try, the rocket blew up on launch.
This time, SpaceX managed to land its rocket on a landing pad on Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Being able to reuse the booster will help cut launch costs in the future, the company says.
A few weeks ago, Jeff Bezos inaugurated his Twitter account with the surprise announcement that his space company, Blue Origin, had launched and landed a rocket after suborbital flight. But SpaceX managed to deliver 11 satellites to orbit (for machine-to-machine communication and Internet of Things solutions provider Orbcomm) - a feat which requires an order of magnitude more thrust, and land its rocket.
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VIDEO: Fourth time lucky - Space X lands rocket
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