Blue Origin, a private space company backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said Tuesday it had landed a rocket upright and gently enough to be used again, a milestone in commercial aeronautics.
Reusing rockets, rather than discarding them, would be a big step toward making space flight less expensive.
The achievement produced “the rarest of beasts: a used rocket,” Bezos said in a statement. Bezos also is the CEO of Inc.
Another private company, SpaceX, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has tried to land boosters upright on a barge in the ocean but so far has failed.
Blue Origin said the unmanned flight took place Monday morning at its site in Van Horn, Texas. The secretive company, based in Kent, Wash., did not invite reporters to attend. Its first test flight happened in April.
Its New Shepard vehicle consists of a capsule that is designed to take people into space for suborbital flights someday, and a booster. In Monday’s flight, the booster soared about 62 miles high and released the capsule, which parachuted to the ground.
After the separation, the booster began falling back to Earth. It slowed its descent by firing its engine, starting at about 4,900 feet above ground. It was descending at just 4.4 mph when it touched down at the launch site, still standing up, the company said.
The space industry is anxious to create a reusable rocket because of its potential to cut the cost to launch.
“It’s really a major step forward toward reusability,” John M. Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said of the Blue Origin landing. Although NASA space shuttles were also reusable after returning to Earth safely, they were far more expensive than rockets, he noted.
“The goal here is low-cost reusability,” Logsdon said.
