A Falcon 9 first stage moments for touching down in the dead center of Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after launching 11 Orbcomm satellites Dec. 21.

A SpaceX upgraded Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Dec. 21 and placed 11 Orbcomm satellites in orbit, while the first stage successfully landed back near the launch site at Cape Canaveral.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...