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WATCH: SpaceX Celebrates A Spectacular Accomplishment

A handout picture made available by SpaceX shows a nine-minute exposure picture of the launch, re-entry and landing burns of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
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A handout picture made available by SpaceX shows a nine-minute exposure picture of the launch, re-entry and landing burns of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

It is without a doubt a spectacular moment for the space industry: Just months after the setback of a launch explosion, a SpaceX rocket managed to launch satellites into space, then tumble back to Earth, use rockets to stabilize itself and stick the landing on a small pad in Florida.

We touched on the news earlier. But we just wanted to make sure you take a look at the video of the scene at the company's headquarters in California the moment SpaceX employees realized that the rocket had landed safely.

It is well worth a couple of minutes of your day. Here's video featuring SpaceX hosts. Warning, there's a fleeting expletive:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: December 22, 2015 at 12:00 AM EST
An earlier version of this post said that the first phase of SpaceX's rocket landed on a barge. It actually landed on a pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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