SpaceX, the commercial aeronautics company, has accomplished successful soft landing with its Falcon 9 rocket, according to a statement. This rocket was used to launch six ORBCOMM satellites into orbit on July 14. After successfully deploying the satellites, the first stage of Falcon 9 re-entered the atmosphere of the Earth and then plummeted down to a soft landing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The soft-landing test confirmed that the Falcon 9 booster can withstand atmospheric re-entry at hypersonic speeds, restart its main engines twice, deploy its landing legs and splashdown even at zero velocity.

The test flight was going according to plan once the first stage of Falcon 9 was in water. The vehicle tipped from a nearly vertical orientation to an almost horizontal one. Although the impact with the surface of the ocean lessened the hull integrity of the rocket, SpaceX will use the data to improve such landings in the future. SpaceX also has plans to mitigate the build-up of ice on the housing of the onboard camera which will allow a better video during future flights.

With the success of this latest test, SpaceX is confident that the Falcon 9 rockets will have the capability of re-entering the atmosphere and also to land safely on a launch pad that is either on land or floating on water. The company also expects to send a rocket on another mission with no repairs. SpaceX plans to conduct another water landing with Falcon 9 which will be followed by two attempts to land a Falcon 9 on a solid surface.

However, the upcoming Falcon 9 missions will require the rocket to operate in expendable mode. Upcoming launches will be high velocity operations in order to place geostationary satellites in orbit. These missions will be carried out by the specialized Falcon Heavy rockets of the company in the future.