SpaceX's 20th successful rocket landing was just as amazing as its 1st
What goes up, must come down, and SpaceX is proving that again and again with their rockets.
The Elon Musk-founded company just completed its 20th successful rocket landing at a pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Friday.
The Falcon 9 rocket took flight at 10:36 a.m. ET, carrying an uncrewed Dragon capsule loaded down with supplies and experiments to the International Space Station for NASA.
The Friday launch is SpaceX's 17th launch of the year, extending its record for most launches by the company in a year.
This launch was special in a few different ways.
First of all, the first stage of the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule had both been to space before. The rocket first launched in June, and the Dragon first visited the Space Station in 2015.
The launch also marks a return to Space Launch Complex 40 for SpaceX. That launchpad was seriously damaged when a Falcon 9 exploded during what should have been a routine test ahead of a launch in 2016.
Since that time, SpaceX has bounced back, using Pad 39A as its launch site while Launch Complex 40 was being repaired.
Pad 39A will serve as the launch site for the first launch of the company's huge new Falcon Heavy rocket, which is expected to perform its first test flight in January 2018.
Reusability is a huge part of SpaceX's business plan moving forward. The company hinges its success on its ability to rapidly reuse rockets and spacecraft they bring back after multiple missions to orbit.
SpaceX isn't the only company working toward reusability.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin is also framing its business around rapid reuse of rockets to suborbital and orbital space in the future.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
