U.S. space firm Blue Origin claimed Tuesday it has successfully landed a suborbital rocket back at its launch site in what it called a "historic" test flight towards achieving fully reusable rockets.
Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, said its New Shepard space vehicle flew to space on Monday, reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers), just past the internationally-recognized boundary of space, and then successfully landed back at its launch site in western Texas.
"Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore," Bezos said in a statement. "Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket."
Named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard, the New Shepard vehicle is comprised of two elements: a crew capsule in which the astronauts ride and a rocket booster powered by a single American-made BE-3 liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen engine.
The U.S. firm said the space vehicle took off at 12:21 p.m. EST (1721 GMT) on Monday and reached a velocity of 3.72 times the speed of sound on its way up. Then, the crew capsule separated from the booster and coasted into its planned test altitude, before making a successful parachute descent.
Meanwhile, the booster descended under guided flight to the landing pad. Just prior to landing, the booster re-ignited its BE-3 engine which slowed the vehicle to 7.1 kilometers per hour for "a gentle, controlled" vertical landing, only 4.5 feet (1.37 meters) from the center of the pad.
"Full reuse is a game changer, and we can't wait to fuel up and fly again," Bezos said.
Blue Origin made a similar attempt in April, but the booster crashed back to Earth because of a hydraulic problem.
Another U.S. space company, SpaceX, which was started by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has been testing vertical rocket landings as well, but so far its attempts have been unsuccessful.
Musk congratulated Blue Origin on its successful rocket landing on Tuesday but noted that suborbital rockets are not flying high or fast enough when compared to his rockets.
"Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO (Blue Origin) team for achieving VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) on their booster," Musk tweeted. "It is, however, important to clear up the difference between 'space' and 'orbit' ... Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO (geostationary transfer orbit) orbit requires ~Mach 30."
