A Falcon 9 first stage lands after an orbital launch
After delivering eleven Orbcomm satellites toward orbit, the Falcon 9 first stage performed a boostback burn, re-entered and landed vertically at Landing Zone 1 on Cape Canaveral. It was the first recovery of an orbital-class booster that had actually contributed to placing a payload in orbit. Nothing about the economics changed that night — the stage was never reflown, and was preserved — but the central assumption of the launch industry, that the vehicle is consumed by the mission, had been falsified in public.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Reusable orbital launch · technology · not located
- Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral · landing site · United States
- Falcon 9 · launch vehicle · not located
- Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) · company · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation launch and reentry licensing records
Supports the fact that commercial orbital launches and commercial reentries from United States territory occur under FAA licence, and that a commercial reentry requires a licensed and approved landing site — the constraint that delayed the first commercial manufacturing return. V55 verification basis: FAA records were not retrieved in this session; no licence number is cited and mission dates are stated from author knowledge.
United States Federal Aviation Administration · Partly verified
FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), commercial launch and reentry licensing and permitting records
Space Launch to Low Earth Orbit: How Much Does It Cost?
Compiles inflation-adjusted price-per-kilogram figures for orbital launch vehicles across the space age and documents the methodological distinction between advertised price and actual cost. V55 verification basis: the dataset was not retrieved in this session, so this pack quotes no figure from it and states the decline only as an order of magnitude.
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Aerospace Security Project · Partly verified
CSIS Aerospace Security Project, launch cost dataset and accompanying methodology note
Recorded on Reusable orbital launch
- A Falcon 9 first stage lands after an orbital launch
- A recovered Falcon 9 booster is flown a second time
- The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed
- NASA contracts for a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.