WATCH THIS: SpaceX celebrate historic Falcon 9 landing

Alan Martin January 13, 2016

Less than a month ago, SpaceX – the private space technology company set up by Elon Musk – changed space flight forever by proving that rockets can be reusable. The world celebrated, and rightly so. It was an amazing accomplishment, a feat equivalent, to quote WaitButWhy, of “firing a pencil over the top of a skyscraper and trying to land it on a shoe box on the ground – on a windy day”. spacex_landing_video_happiness_2

Now SpaceX has produced a video recap of their triumph, and it makes for amazing viewing. Not just for seeing the incredible science and engineering that made it all possible in action again, but for the look of pure, unadulterated delight on SpaceX employees’ faces as their hard work pays off. They’ve made history, and you can see it in their wonderful reactions.

With plenty of the world’s news feeling not hugely uplifting of late, this video is a wonderful change of pace and helps draw attention to the fact that SpaceX is hoping to do it all again in less than a week’s time.

This time, SpaceX is planning on landing the Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean platform, very much going from “Hard” to “Nightmare” mode in terms of difficulty, but if December’s events told us anything, it’s not to rule out Elon Musk’s space baby.

If a SpaceX sea landing sounds familiar, it should: the company has twice tried and twice failed to stick an ocean landing, back in January and April 2015.

Hopefully, third time will be the charm, but we’ll know for sure when the Falcon 9 takes off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 18 January at 6.42pm GMT.

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