As the rocket descends, decelerating to a speed of just 4.5 miles per hour, steerable fins affixed to the side guide it to its final destination. The hitch is that landing the first stage without damaging it is incredibly tricky. So if SpaceX can reuse the rocket's first stage, that would vastly lower the cost of all sorts of missions: commercial satellite launches, collaborations with NASA, or even space tourism. The appeal is obvious: Building a new Falcon 9 rocket costs $54 million, but the rocket itself only burns about $200,000 worth of fuel when it goes into orbit. A s the first stage of the Falcon 9 falls to Earth, it fires up engines that guide it down for a controlled landing: The process of landing a reusable rocket is shown in this diagram from SpaceX. So, instead, Musk's company is trying to make spaceflight cheaper by recovering the rocket for reuse. Musk has long argued this is a senseless waste, akin to junking a brand-new 747 after a single flight to London. In traditional launches, those initial rocket stages would simply break apart after they'd done their job and plop unceremoniously into the ocean, never to be used again. Then there's a smaller, 49-foot-tall second stage, which burns for another five minutes, carrying the craft into orbit before also separating. There's the 138-foot-tall first stage, which burns fuel for a few minutes, lifting the spacecraft to a height of 50 miles, before disconnecting and falling back to Earth. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets consist of two parts. Why SpaceX is so keen on developing reusable rockets The point of recovering the first stage of the rocket, meanwhile, is ultimately to try and make future spaceflight far, far cheaper. That payload is now in orbit and will reach the station Sunday morning, SpaceX said. The Falcon 9 was launched in order to resupply the International Space Station and deliver an inflatable house that NASA will use for research purposes ( no, really! ). Onboard view of landing in high winds /FedRzjYYyQ But ocean landings are likely to be more common in the future, so this was a crucial step. Last December, the company brought a Falcon 9 back down onto land for the first time, at Cape Canaveral. This is the first time SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket onto a floating platform, after four previous failures. That's impressive considering it faced 50 mph winds and the platform is just the size of a football field: The rocket was nearly dead on target when it landed upright. Elon Musk's private spaceflight company SpaceX pulled off a stunning feat Friday afternoon - launching one of its Falcon 9 rockets into space and then, minutes later, successfully landing the rocket's main component onto a drone ship floating in the ocean for reuse.
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