Image Cache: If you needed proof that the future of reusable rocket technology is going to be spectacular, look no further than SpaceX’s latest launch-and-landing time exposure photo, which shows a Falcon 9 rocket screaming away from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (left), before the first stage booster lands gently back on terra firma (right).
Image: John Raoux / Associated Press
Browse through the cool photos, animations and diagrams in Gizmodo’s Image Cache here.
It was the fifth time SpaceX successfully landed the first stage booster of a Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth, and the second successful ground-based landing (the three most recent landings have occurred on Of Course I Still Love You, the offshore barge appropriately named after a sentient intergalactic spaceship). For me, it’s astonishing to see just how quickly SpaceX is normalising something that engineers and space nerds have been dreaming of for more than half a century.
But we shouldn’t let ourselves get complacent. This shit is still incredible.