Nov 24, 2015 10:51 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Blue Origin, the space transportation company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, successfully landed a suborbital rocket a day after launching.

According to BBC News, the unmanned New Shepard spacecraft launched from West Texas on Monday and reached an area between space and the Earth's atmosphere before re-landing itself on Tuesday.

"Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore," Bezos said in a statement on Blue Origin's website. "This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design. Our unique ring fin shifted the center of pressure aft to help control reentry and descent; eight large drag brakes deployed and reduced the vehicle's terminal speed to 387 mph; hydraulically actuated fins steered the vehicle through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to a location precisely aligned with and 5,000 feet above the landing pad; then the highly-throttleable BE-3 engine re-ignited to slow the booster as the landing gear deployed and the vehicle descended the last 100 feet at 4.4 mph to touchdown on the pad."

Bezos did not provide a timetable for the test flight. BBC News noted that last week the Amazon founder simply stated New Shepard's next test flight would be happening "very soon." The spacecraft is designed to carry up to six astronauts, though there is no timetable for a manned test flight.

Like SpaceX, Blue Origin has put an emphasis on re-using rockets that carry space taxi's ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX has yet to land its reusable rocket after launch, but the company's CEO, Elon Musk, was keen to congratulate Bezos nonetheless.

But SpaceX did recently receive a formal offer from NASA to fly astronauts to the ISS by 2017, a move expected to save the U.S. money paid to Russia to do the same thing. Reusing rockets is also expected to save the federal government billions of dollars.

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