The inside story of SpaceX’s historic rocket landing that changed launch forever

Summary

“It’s hard to describe how epic this comeback was after our first Falcon 9 launch failure,” Koenigsmann said. As he, Musk, and the others marveled up at that sooty rocket, illuminated by flood lights beneath dark and starry skies, they must have wondered if this moment could ever be eclipsed. “It just felt so massive.” They were pretty excited back in Hawthorne, too. As the rocket touched down, hordes of employees crammed into the factory floor just outside mission control started chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” A raucous celebration ensued. And why not? The four thousand employees of SpaceX had wrought nothing short of a miracle in the six months preceding that night. The company worked on four separate, massive projects in parallel, packing their final exams into that single launch. Riding onboard the Falcon 9 rocket in late December were the company’s return to flight mission, a significant upgrade to the Full Thrust version, an unprecedented oxygen densification program, and the first landing. They saved Christmas, to boot. The historic ORBCOMM launch and landing delivered one of the most cathartic and breathtaking moments in SpaceX history. I do not believe it is possible to overstate the significance. With its fate on the line, the company roared back from a terrible and financially disastrous failure. And, on the very same flight, SpaceX accomplished something no company, or country, had ever done before. Until then, SpaceX had followed in the footsteps of NASA and others in launching rockets, flying satellites into space, and landing spacecraft in the water. Sure, it did so in cheaper and innovative ways. But these were well-trodden paths. No one had ever, ever launched an orbital rocket and landed it back on Earth minutes later. Until that night. Catriona Chambers came to SpaceX in early 2005 as an electronics engineer. Within months on the job, she picked up responsibility for the Merlin engine computer on the Falcon 1 rocket. On that small rocket’s very ...