Landing and Recovery

Four landings, and one of them changed what a rocket could be. On the 21st of December 2015, a Falcon 9 first stage put eleven satellites on their way to orbit, then turned around, restarted its engines and landed upright at Cape Canaveral: the first time an orbital-class booster had ever been recovered instead of discarded. That landing is Return Path, in this collection.

The other three show what became routine after it: a booster settling onto a drone ship far out at sea in fog, another descending under a rainbow, a landing burn caught mid-flare against dark water. What used to end every launch in a write-off now ends most of them on a deck, ready to fly again.