Spaceflight company Blue Origin, founded by Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, got one step closer to making reusable rockets a reality.
In its first ever live broadcast, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard rocket out of a Texas test base on Sunday, The Verge reports. The launch was successful and marked the company’s fourth time safely landing the rocket, but this time with a twist—the company purposefully failed to deploy one of the capsule’s main parachutes to see if it could still make it back in one piece, and it did.
This accomplishment for Bezos’ Blue Origin comes just days after what Elon Musk described as possibly the “hardest impact to date” for SpaceX (SPACEX). The two companies are both working towards creating reusable spacecraft, which would help to drastically reduce the cost of space flight. However, as Fortune previously noted, they’re testing very different designs. New Shepard is a sub-orbital rocket; Falcon 9 delivers satellites into orbit, and therefore has to be faster, taller, and thinner, making it more difficult to land successfully.
Smooth landing with one chute out #GradatimFerociter pic.twitter.com/tyipXecjV2
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) June 19, 2016
Careful engineering plus of course … the lucky boots. Successful mission. #RocketsReused #GradatimFerociter pic.twitter.com/ON5lhfGPSK
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) June 19, 2016
Blue Origin declined to comment.
