The SpaceX project has launched from Florida, but the reusable rocket remains a tricky prospect, after another came crashing down to Earth.
The Falcon rocket took off from Cape Canaveral yesterday after two weeks of delays and a last-second abort on Sunday.
The telecoms satellite payload was put into orbit but plans to bring the lower stage back for re-use, by landing it on a ship in the ocean, failed.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, said that he was not surprised by the failure on this occasion. A drone ship was placed about 400 miles offshore, where the booster rocket was supposed to land softly.
“Rocket landed hard on the drone ship. Didn’t expect this one to work (v hot re-entry), but next fight has a good chance,” Mr Musk tweeted.
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The ultimate aim of SpaceX is to provide re-usable rockets for commercial space missions but there has been a hiatus on commercial launches since June of last year, when a broken strut caused a failure.
Now that the rockets are up and running again it should be a busy 2016 for Mr Musk and his team, with numerous contracts and other projects still making headway. SpaceX will continue to work on its Dragon astronaut capsule, which it intends to test unmanned before filling the cockpit and taking astronauts to the International Space Station.
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla motors, is in a race with Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, to provide commercially competitive space flight. Both have recognised that re-usable rockets offer the most economically viable method.
Mr Bezos, who is worth in the region of £33 billion, won the race to the first rocket landing, but Mr Musk, valued at just over £9 billion, has since matched the feat.
In other space news, astronaut Tim Peake asked people on Earth to help him train for the London marathon.
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He is doing the miles on a treadmill on the International Space Station and will on April 24 attempt to become the first man to run a marathon in orbit.
Major Peake, 43, who is running for the Prince’s Trust, invited people to run with him, virtually at least.
Times of his training runs will be tweeted by @LondonMarathon and @astro-timpeake.
“It would be fantastic to run with other people and see their avatars on my screen as I do my training,” he said.