Private space travel company Blue Origin claims important commercial milestone
A private space company owned by the chief executive of Amazon has landed a rocket vertically and gently enough to reused - an important marker in commerical space exploration.
The achievement produced "the rarest of beasts: a used rocket", Jeff Bezos, founder of the company Blue Origin, tweeted.
"It was one of the greatest moments in my life," said Jeff Bezos, founder of the rocket company, during a media conference.
ITV News At Ten Presenter Tom Bradby explains:
Rivals SpaceX has previously tried to land its own boosters upright on a barge in the sea but has so far been unsuccessful with the endeavour.
The ability to reusable rocketry - rather than discarding them - would be a giant leap in making space travel much less expensive.
In a private test launch took place on Monday at its site in Van Horn in west Texas.
Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle consists of a capsule that is designed to take people into space for suborbital flights one day, and a booster.During the test launch, New Shepard soared 62 miles into the atmosphere on its booster before parachuting back to the ground.After the separation, the booster began falling back to Earth. It slowed its descent by firing its engine, starting at about 4,900ft above ground.It was descending at just 4.4mph when it touched down at the launch site, still standing up, the company said.
"It's really a major step forward towards reusability," John M Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, said.