"They were pretty excited back in Hawthorne, too. As the rocket touched down, hordes of employees crammed into the factory floor just outside mission control started chanting, U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! A raucous celebration ensued. And why not? The four thousand employees of SpaceX had wrought nothing short of a miracle in the six months preceding that night. The company worked on four separate, massive projects in parallel, packing their final exams into that single launch."
"Riding onboard the Falcon 9 rocket in late December were the company's return to flight mission, a significant upgrade to the Full Thrust version, an unprecedented oxygen densification program, and the first landing. They saved Christmas, to boot. The historic ORBCOMM launch and landing delivered one of the most cathartic and breathtaking moments in SpaceX history. I do not believe it is possible to overstate the significance. With its fate on the line, the company roared back from a terrible and financially disastrous failure."
After a disastrous first Falcon 9 launch failure, SpaceX executed a dramatic return-to-flight culminating in the ORBCOMM mission and the company's first successful booster landing. Engineered upgrades included the Full Thrust version and an unprecedented oxygen densification program, all delivered on a single night alongside the return-to-flight objective. Thousands of employees celebrated as the booster touched down after launch, marking a technical and financial reversal for the company. The flight represented the first time any company launched an orbital rocket and recovered it on Earth minutes later, shifting aerospace precedent. Early employees like Catriona Chambers took on critical engineering responsibilities during the company's formative years.
Read at arstechnica.com
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