SpaceX successfully launched a newly designed spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday evening.
Launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida using the workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL is carrying more than 11,000 pounds (about 4,990 kg) of supplies for the crew aboard the space station.
As with most Falcon 9 missions, SpaceX brought home the first-stage booster for an upright landing. While many of the landings involve touching down on a droneship stationed off the coast of Florida, Sunday’s mission saw the booster return to a designated spot at Cape Canaveral.
The Cape Canaveral landing provided an excellent chance for Space to grab a rare tracking shot of the returning booster. You can watch it below:
The dramatic footage shows the 135.2-foot-tall (41.2 meters) booster firing its engines to slow itself as it nears terra firma. Then, just seconds before touching down, the booster’s legs deploy, enabling a soft, steady, and perfect landing.
Landing first-stage Falcon 9 boosters in this way allows SpaceX to use them for multiple missions, drastically reducing spaceflight costs. The one used in Sunday’s mission was on its fourth flight, while several have now flown for SpaceX more than 20 times.
SpaceX performed its first successful vertical landing of a Falcon 9 booster in December 2015, marking the first time for an orbital-class rocket to return and land intact on Earth.
Since then it’s achieved more than 480 Falcon 9 booster landings, demonstrating the high reliability of its reusability program.
The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company is now applying what it’s learned from the Falcon 9 landings to its next-generation Starship rocket, a much larger vehicle that’s set to be used for crew and cargo missions to the moon and possibly even Mars. SpaceX has already worked out how to bring home the Starship’s 233-foot-tall (71 meters) first-stage Super Heavy booster, but it also wants to land the upper-stage Starship spacecraft back at base, something it could attempt for the first time in 2026.
