San Francisco, Nov 24 (EFE).– Blue Origin, the space transport company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced Tuesday that its suborbital rocket that lifted off on Monday successfully landed back on the launch pad in Texas, a key step in its drive to build reusable rockets.

“Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle flew a flawless mission – soaring to 329,839 feet and then returning through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to make a gentle, controlled landing just 4 and a half feet from the center of the pad. Full reuse is a game changer, and we can’t wait to fuel up and fly again,” said Bezos in a press release on Tuesday.

“Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts – a used rocket,” said Bezos, who is also the owner of The Washington Post.

The rocket, designed to transport six passengers, lifted off from Texas on Monday and reached an altitude of about 100 km (62 mi.), crossing the acknowledged limit of Earth’s atmosphere and briefly entering space then returning to the launch pad eight minutes later, Blue Origin said.

The space vehicle was traveling at four times the speed of sound during much of its flight.

“We are building Blue Origin to seed an enduring human presence in space, to help us move beyond this blue planet that is the origin of all we know,” Bezos wrote in a blog post on the company’s Web site.

The aerospace industry for some time has been trying to design reusable rockets with an eye toward reducing expenses and increasing the number of launches.

The private spaceflight firm that has attracted the most attention to date has been SpaceX, owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, the cofounder of Tesla, the electric vehicle firm.

SpaceX has tried on several occasions to land its rockets on Earth undamaged, but weather and technical problems have prevented it from doing so.

So far, rockets like the one used by Blue Origin have either disintegrated in flight or landed with so much damage that they could not be reused.

Experts say that finding a way to reuse rockets is vital for making projects such as space tourism viable.

Musk on Tuesday congratulated Bezos and the Blue Origin team on his Twitter account. EFE