SpaceX has successfully landed an unmanned Falcon-9 rocket upright, after sending 11 satellites into orbit.
The Falcon-9 craft touched down on December 21, about 10km from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
It is not the first spacecraft to land a booster vertically; that feat was claimed by the much smaller New Shepard rocket in Texas last month.
Nonetheless the Falcon-9 flight, which also went twice as high as New Shepard, is a milestone towards reusing rockets.
SpaceX aims to slash the cost of private space operations with such reusable components – but the company has not launched a rocket since one exploded in June.
On that occasion an unmanned Falcon-9 broke apart in flames minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with debris tumbling out of the sky into the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket, which had 18 straight successes prior to the fateful flight, was in the process of sending a cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS).
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to send supplies to the ISS.
On Monday night, local time, the upgraded 23-storey-tall rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with the main stage returning about 10 minutes later to a landing site about 6 miles south of the launch pad.
Near the peak of its flight, at an altitude of some 125 miles, it propelled the rocket’s first stage – laden with 11 communications satellites – into space.
The flawless launch on December 21 is a major success for privately-owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, the California-based company set up and run by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Elon Musk has said the ability to return its rockets to Earth so they can be reused and re-flown would hugely reduce his company’s operational costs in the growing but highly competitive private space launch industry.
SpaceX employees broke out in celebration as they watched a live stream of the 156ft-tall white booster slowly descend to earth in the form of a glowing orange ball.
“Welcome back, baby!” Elon Musk said in a celebratory tweet.
SpaceX commentators described the launch and return – the first time an orbital rocket successfully achieved a controlled landing on Earth – as “incredibly exciting”.
“This was a first for us at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and I can’t even begin to describe the joy the team feels right now having been a part of this historic first-stage rocket landing,” the top officer at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Brig Gen Wayne Monteith, said in a statement.
SpaceX is aiming to revolutionize the rocket industry, which up until now has lost millions of dollars in discarded machinery and valuable rocket parts after each launch.
Several earlier attempts to land the Falcon 9’s first stage on an ocean platform have failed.
After weeks of speculations, Tesla has unveiled Autopilot system.
While not fully self-driving, the software means the Model S and new Model X can “automatically steer down the highway, change lanes, and adjust speed in response to traffic”.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the Autopilot mode was designed to increase driver confidence on the road.
However, Elon Musk said users adopting the software – available in North America from October 15 – should exercise caution while using it.
“It should not hit pedestrians, hopefully,” he told the media.
“It should handle them well.”
He added that if the car is involved in a collision, the driver is still liable.
“The driver cannot abdicate responsibility. That will come at some point in the future.”
Other regions of the world would be updated in the next couple of weeks pending regulatory approval.
The software uses a combination of cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors and mapping data to determine its position and navigate.
When the car has arrived at its destination, it is able to scan for an available space and park itself.
Unlike Google, which is aiming for a fully-autonomous vehicle, Tesla’s approach is to gradually introduce features which take away the need for drivers to carry out certain functions.
Elon Musk said: “Currently there are limitations to the software which would improve over time.
“If there’s heavy snow it’s going to be harder for the system to work, so we’d advise caution.
“Essentially it’s like a person – how well can a person figure out what route they should take. Over time it will be better than a person.
“Long term it will be way better than a person. It never gets tired, it’s never had anything to drink, it’s never arguing with someone in the car. It’s not distracted.”
Other carmakers such as BMW and Volvo are also developing, and implementing, autonomous features to their cars.
Google’s entirely self-driving car has clocked up well over one million miles on public roads, mostly in California.
The first full-scale Hyperloop will be built in central California in 2016.
Hyperloop is a new transportation method imagined up by entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The 5-mile test track will be built halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The system uses depressurized tubes, as well as magnets and fans, to propel up to 28 people at a time at high speeds.
This model will be slower and shorter than the full-sized near-supersonic system envisioned by Elon Musk.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced the agreement with the developers of Quay Valley, California, a planned community that emphasizes sustainability.
The system will be built alongside the Interstate 5 freeway in central California, and the developers claim that it will be the first passenger-ready Hyperloop to be built in an urban area.
Elon Musk, who founded companies like Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors, first announced the idea of a Hyperloop in a 57-page white paper in August 2013.
In his original envisioning, Elon Musk imagined the system transporting people between Los Angeles and San Francisco- a distance of about 400 miles – in 30 minutes.
Shortly after the announcement Elon Musk handed the concept over to the public for anyone to develop, saying that he was too busy with other projects.
Since then hundreds of engineers have contributed ideas to the project during their spare time.
Elon Musk has described the design as a cross between Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table.
Paypal founder Elon Musk has revealed plans for a radical new “hyperloop” transport system that could “shoot” passengers 380 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes.
Travellers enter aluminium pods mounted by skis either to their feet or to their cars.
The pods, mounted above the ground on columns 50 to 100 yards apart, travel through steel tubes, reaching speeds of up to 800 mph and travelling on a cushion of air.
Elon Musk, who is also behind electric car firm Tesla and space company SpaceX, says the system could be built for less than a high speed rail link.
He told Bloomberg Business Week the system would be “like getting a ride on Space Mountain at Disneyland”.
“It would have less lateral acceleration – which is what tends to make people feel motion sick – than a subway ride, as the pod banks against the tube like an airplane,” he said.
“It would feel supersmooth.”
“The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart,” Elon Musk claimed.
Elon Musk boasted on Twitter he has been working on the plan all night after promising to release the details today, creating massive speculation online over its technology.
“Pulled all nighter working on Hyperloop (as did others),” he tweeted.
“Hopefully not too many mistakes.”
Elon Musk said he started thinking about the idea when plans for a 130 mph (210 km/h) high-speed train connection between LA and San Francisco were revealed, but now he has detailed his own version on Tesla’s site.
“I originally started thinking about [Hyperloop] when I read about California’s high-speed rail project which was somewhat disappointing,” he told a Google Hangout with Richard Branson last week.
“It’s actually worse than taking the plane. I get a little sad when things are not getting better in the future.
“Another example would be like the Concorde being retired and the fact there is no supersonic passenger transport. I think that is sad. You want the future to be better than the past, or at least I do.”
Elon Musk made his fortune with the internet payment system PayPal before switching his skills into developing the new Falcon rocket system for NASA and the Tesla electric car.
Elon Musk unveils plans for the Hyperloop that will shoot passengers from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes
HE claims Hyperloop would be a practical solution for city pairs separated by 1,000 miles (1,600 km) or less. Beyond this distance, it would be better to take a plane, he explained.
But for the shorter distance, Elon Musk’s new concept would beat the plane, he argues, because it would not waste time ascending and descending.
“You want a transport system that is roughly twice as fast as the next best alternative, that costs less, that is safer, that is not subject to weather and is more convenient,” Elon Musk said.
“If there were such a thing, I think most people would take it. In fact, it would increase the travel between the city pairs because of the increased convenience.”
Experts say Elon Musk’s track record could help the plan become a reality.
“Hyperloop is quite an old science fiction idea but Elon Musk is the sort of man who could make it work,” said physicist Martin Archer from Imperial College London.
“He’s the guy who made electric cars go fast with Tesla, which many people didn’t think would be possible; and he’s the head of SpaceX which is the only commercial rocket builder that has managed to hook up with the International Space Station.”
Elon Musk says he will leave it to others to build the system initially.
“I have to focus on core Tesla business and SpaceX business, and that’s more than enough,” he told investors of Tesla, his electric car firm.
“If nothing happens for a few years, with that I mean maybe it could make sense to make the halfway path with Tesla involvement,” Elon Musk said.
“Hyperloop consists of a low pressure tube with capsules that are transported at both low and high speeds throughout the length of the tube,” Elon Musk said in an exhaustive paper detailing the system posted online.
“The capsules are supported on a cushion of air.”
Each of the capsules is pressurized, and Elon Musk says they have an emergency braking system as well as a reserve air supply in the event of an emergency.
The entrepreneur admits the scheme came from a disdain for current systems.
“When the California <<high speed>> rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too.
“How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?”
Elon Musk claims the scheme can power itself through solar energy.
“By placing solar panels on top of the tube, the Hyperloop can generate far in excess of the energy needed to operate.
“This takes into account storing enough energy in battery packs to operate at night and for periods of extended cloudy weather,” he claims.
Elon Musk estimates the overall cost of the tube, pillars, vacuum pumps and stations will be $4.06 billion for the passenger version of Hyperloop, and $5.31 billion for the larger version capable of sending cargo and even cars.
Elon Musk says a route from LA to San Francisco could be running within seven years.
“It could happen at least 4-5 years after a working prototype is developed, so 7-10 years away,” he told reporters.
“That’s comparable timing to the rail project.”
Elon Musk also said he may develop a prototype system himself, despite previously claiming he would leave it to others.
“I’ve sort of come around a little bit on my thinking here,” he said.
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