Dec. 22, 2015, was a milestone in the history of space travel. On the night of Dec. 21 to 22, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral and successfully deployed 11 communications satellites into Earth orbit. It then achieved something previously considered nearly impossible: The rocket’s first stage was guided back to Earth and landed vertically and precisely on a platform just a few kilometers from the launch site.

Never before had any nation or company managed to bring an orbital-capable rocket safely back to Earth just minutes after launch. Jeff Bezos’s company, Blue Origin, had achieved a safe landing with its rocket about a month earlier, but that vehicle was suborbital and incapable of carrying payloads into orbit. It took another decade before Bezos accomplished what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk achieved in 2015. But to this day, not a single government space agency anywhere in the world has managed to do the same.

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