X

SpaceX lands its 'hot and fast' Falcon 9 rocket again

Company confirms that its Falcon 9 rocket has successfully made a landing, despite a much tougher mission parameter due to a faster and hotter reentry.

Aloysius Low Senior Editor
Aloysius Low is a Senior Editor at CNET covering mobile and Asia. Based in Singapore, he loves playing Dota 2 when he can spare the time and is also the owner-minion of two adorable cats.
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falcon9landingscreengrab.jpg

A screenshot of the actual landing from SpaceX's web cast of its Falcon 9 launch.

 Screenshot by Aloysius Low/CNET

Elon Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, has just completed a landing for its Falcon 9 rocket, which delivered a payload of a Japanese satellite into orbit earlier Thursday. Like the last time, the rocket landed on the company's autonomous landing barge "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean.

Unlike the last time, Musk and SpaceX weren't as confident about landing the rocket, due to a "faster and hotter" reentry. Musk tweeted Thursday than odds of a mission success were "maybe even, but we should learn a lot either way."

In the meantime, the JCSAT-14 Japanese satellite is on its way for deployment to a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, and you can catch the live webcast on YouTube. If you want to watch the landing, it's about 38 minutes when the magic happens.