SpaceX makes historic rocket landing

PanARMENIAN.Net - After four failed bids SpaceX has finally stuck the landing, powering the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket onto an ocean platform where it touched down upright after launching cargo to space, ABC Online reports.

Images of the tall, narrow rocket standing on a platform that SpaceX calls a droneship sparked cheers and screams of joy at SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California on Friday, April 8.

"The first stage of the Falcon 9 just landed on our Of Course I Still Love You droneship," SpaceX wrote on Twitter, after a launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 4:43pm.

NASA spokesman George Diller confirmed that the rocket had "successfully" landed, just minutes after the Falcon 9 propelled the unmanned Dragon cargo craft to orbit, carrying supplies for astronauts at the International Space Station.

SpaceX has once before managed to set the rocket down on land, but ocean attempts had failed, with the rocket coming close each time but either crashing or tipping over.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said that being able to return costly rocket parts for repeated use, instead of jettisoning them into the ocean after each launch, would make spaceflight less expensive and less harmful to the environment.

"Landed! That is amazing! World-leading ability, proven," Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on wrote Twitter, offering his congratulations to SpaceX.

"Opens the imagination to what is possible."