SpaceX just landed a rocket back on Earth after flying it to space. How's your Monday?
This isn't getting old yet.
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket built by Elon Musk's SpaceX came in for a dusty and impressive landing at the company's landing zone in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday. The landing occurred about 10 minutes after the rocket launched a Dragon cargo craft carrying supplies to the International Space Station.
This marks the company's 14th successful landing and its 6th successful one on land, with the rest of them taking place on drone ships in the ocean.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has long said that he hopes this kind of feat can become routine, and the company is well on its way toward making that happen.
The rocket landings are a critical component of SpaceX's business plan, which calls for lowering the cost of spaceflight through the reuse of rockets.
At this point it's a surprise when a landing doesn't work perfectly, not when it does.
The Dragon is now working its way to the Space Station, loaded down with thousands of pounds of supplies for the crew onboard. It should arrive at the orbiting lab in about two days.
This marks SpaceX's 12th official cargo run to the station for NASA.
In the future, the company is expected to start launching people to the station for NASA as part of the agency's commercial crew program, designed to end reliance on Russian rockets to get astronauts to outer space.
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.
