Blue Origin, a privately-funded aerospace developer set up Jeff Bezos (formerly of Amazon), completed a historic spaceflight mission yesterday. The company launched their shuttle, the New Shepard, up to a pre-planned height of 100.5km, and then successfully landed the ship near it's launch site in West Texas. But the thing that makes this flight important is how much of the spacecraft was landed. It's been standard practice until now for spacecraft to jettison off larger sections in takeoff, and then land the smaller containment vehicle with parachutes. That leaves the separated fuel tanks to drop back to Earth and be scrapped. In this case, while the New Shepard's head section floated down on a parachute, the real test was for the rocket's main body. See for yourself.

That's right, Blue Origin landed and retrieved a spent rocket without damage. That's a huge step in the field, making spaceflight a lot more cost-effective, and therefore possible more often. As Bezos himself said in a statement, "Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts—a used rocket. Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle flew a flawless mission—soaring to 329,839 feet and then returning through 191kmph high-altitude crosswinds to make a gentle, controlled landing just four-and-a-half feet from the center of the pad. Full reuse is a game changer, and we can’t wait to fuel up and fly again.”?

Elon Musk's SpaceX has been working on their own Dragon spacecraft to do just this, but it looks like Blue Origin has soundly beaten them to it. A point worth noting, however, is that the New Shepard is only built for sub-orbital flight, whereas SpaceX's vehicle is being designed to lift payloads into orbit for NASA. They just got their first mission order from the space agency two days ago, but there's no word on when that mission is scheduled for.