Incredible moment SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lands on drone ship…

This is the incredible moment when the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster rocket touched down on its landing pad minutes after sending two astronauts into space.

The Falcon 9 landed upright on the SpaceX’s droneship named Of Course I Still Love You in stunning feat of technological engineering.

It marks the first successful ocean landing of a reusable rocket.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center 7.22pm UK time sending American astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into space.

Momentous footage showed the spaceship hurtling skywards for a few minutes before making its trip back down to Earth.

The Falcon 9 touched upright on the landing pad

The Crew Dragon shuttle separated from the second stage booster three minutes after launch and entered orbit.

Colleagues were heard cheering and celebrating as they received pictures showing that the vessel had completed its mission.

Moments before liftoff, Hurley said, “SpaceX we’re go for launch. Let’s light this candle,” paraphrasing the famous phrase uttered on the launch pad in 1961 by Alan Shephard, the first American launched into space.

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It will take the astronauts 19 hours to reach the space station, where they will join the three other residents – Nasa’s Chris Cassidy and Russia’s Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.

The mission, named Demo-2, has made Elon Musk’s SpaceX the first private company to send humans into space, ushering in a new era of commercial space travel.

The pair were due to travel on Wednesday but the mission was aborted less than 17 minutes before launch over concerns that the event could trigger lightning.

A camera on the Falcon 9 craft showed how it fell back to Earth

According to Nasa, the aim of the mission is to show SpaceX’s ability to ferry astronauts to the space station and back safely.

It is the final major step required by SpaceX’s astronaut carrier, the Crew Dragon, to get certified by Nasa’s Commercial Crew Programme for more long-term manned missions to space.

The Crew Dragon is expected to rendezvous and dock with the space station on Sunday at 3.30pm UK time.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket stands after making its first successful upright landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship on April 8, 2016

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NASA and SpaceX launch

Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) operates out of Port Canaveral, Florida, according to SpaceX documentation.

Construction started in early 2015 and was built as a replacement for the original droneship, Just Read The Instructions.

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