SpaceX just did something amazing.  After helping to launch 11 communications satellites to orbit the spaceflight company managed to bring back the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket to Earth, landing it back on a landing pad in Cape Canaveral.  "The Falcon has landed," an announcer on the SpaceX webcast said.  Oh, and all of the 11 satellites deployed without a problem.  This landing marks the first time SpaceX has attempted to vertically park a Falcon 9 rocket stage back on solid ground after flying a payload to orbit. It's also the first time any company has landed an orbital rocket segment back on Earth following a launch to space.  The rocket stage reached an altitude of about 200 km before making its way back to Earth for its landing.  What a day in spaceflight. Spacewalk, Progress launch, and now @SpaceX has a great launch and recovers the first stage. 2015. Amazing work.  — Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) December 22, 2015  SpaceX has attempted to land the booster stage of the Falcon 9 on a drone ship in the Atlantic on previous flights, but those tests weren't successful. The company has said that, in some ways, it's easier to land a rocket on the pad back at Cape Canaveral because the landing booster doesn't have to contend with waves and the pad is larger.  But this isn't the first successful reusable rocket test of the year.  Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin also landed its rocket back on Earth after flying a test capsule to the edge of space — close to 100 km in altitude. (SpaceX has also launched and landed its one-engine Grasshopper reusable rocket, though it never reached space.)  Both Bezos and Musk want to make reusable rockets a reality to greatly reduce the cost of spaceflight.  What a landing. @SpaceX pic.twitter.com/YTfCRHaC8w  — Mashable News (@MashableNews) December 22, 2015  At the moment, a Falcon 9 rocket costs about $16 million to manufacture, but the fuel itself costs about $200,000, according to Musk. By vertically landing the rocket on a pad back on Earth, rocket companies can re-use the stages for other missions instead of allowing the expensive hardware to re-enter the atmosphere, burning up along the way.  Reusing rocket stages could bring the cost of spaceflight down by orders of magnitude.  "It's much like refueling a 747 or something," Musk said during a session at the American Geophysical Union last week.  This flight of the Falcon 9 marks SpaceX's return to flight since a Falcon 9 disintegrated not long after launch in June 2015. (That rocket broke apart carrying an uncrewed Dragon capsule to the International Space Station.)  .@SpaceX didn't do this in the desert, in secret. They did it in front of the world, all eyes on them. No fear.  — Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) December 22, 2015  The rocket launched today is an "upgraded" version of the Falcon 9 rocket, reportedly making it more powerful than ever.  The Falcon 9 "has higher performance than the prior version due mostly to increased boost thrust, deep cryo-oxidizer and a much larger upper stage engine bell," SpaceX said. "It also has a number of reliability enhancements, such as a redundant stage separation system and greater structural safety margins."
SpaceX made history Monday night by launching a rocket to space and landing part of it safely back on Earth.