Voyages of the Space Dragon, Part 3

This week has seen a major milestone for the SpaceX’s Dragon space program, which suffered a major setback in June of this year. SpaceX staff pulled off one of their most difficult technical challenges when they piloted their Falcon 9 rocket through a launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida, placed several small satellites into orbit, and then returned it to a perfect, upright landing back at Cape Canaveral.

It’s not only a great recovery for SpaceX after the loss of a previous Falcon 9 during launch, but a milestone in space travel. One of the big obstacles to regular space flight has been that so much of the support hardware — complicated, expensive equipment — has been deployed for only a single use. This feat promises that both rockets and crew modules can be returned to Earth and re-used.

Now that the rocket has successfully landed, it will be inspected to see how much wear and tear the mission caused. Once repaired, it can be used again and again.

Here’s some footage of the recent mission, in case you aren’t tired of seeing it yet.