Watch All 5 SpaceX Rocket Landings in This Epic Video

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SpaceX's Five Successful Rocket Landings
SpaceX has made five successful rocket landings, two on land and three by sea, between Dec. 21, 2015 and July 18, 2016. In each of the landings, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket first stage booster returned to Earth. (Image credit: SpaceX via Space.com)

SpaceX nailed its fifth successful rocket landing in a brilliant overnight flight today (July 18), and to celebrate we've combined all five of the private spaceflight company's booster landings into this single awesome video.  

The rocket landings by SpaceX are part of the company's quest to perfect a reusable launch system that could drastically lower the cost of spaceflight by reusing boosters instead of just throwing them away.

During today's launch, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, sending a Dragon capsule filled with NASA cargo toward the International Space Station. The rocket's first-stage booster then returned to Earth, making a pinpoint touchdown on a SpaceX landing pad near its original launch site. You can see more photos of the awesome rocket launch and landing here.

SpaceX's first rocket landing during an orbital flight occurred on Dec. 21, 2015. Building on that success, SpaceX tried (and failed) to land a rocket on one of its ocean pads twice in early 2016, ultimately succeeding on April 8, when a Falcon 9 booster touched down on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You after launching a Dragon cargo ship for NASA. SpaceX has two landing platforms for drone ships (the other is Just Read The Instructions) that are named after the fictional sentient starships envisioned by science fiction author Iain M. Banks. 

Two more drone-ship landings followed ─ one on May 6 and the other on May 27 ─ during commercial satellite launches for SpaceX customers. (A subsequent drone-ship landing try on June 15 failed due to an early engine shutdown.)

On Saturday (July 16), SpaceX representatives said that they were aiming to re-fly a Falcon 9 booster sometime this fall. Early today, they added that the first launch to reuse a Dragon capsule (another reusability goal) could occur in 2017. 

Editor's note: This story was corrected on July 19 to reflect that SpaceX has landed its Falcon 9 rockets to date on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. 

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.