I was impressed again on Friday when SpaceX launched a Japanese satellite into geosynchronous orbit and returned its booster engine to a barge floating in the ocean. That’s the second time they’ve done it in a month — more proof that Elon Musk’s team is changing the space-delivery paradigm. Phil Plait explains the difficulty of what SpaceX pulled off here.
I was also struck by the team of three people narrating the event for the webcast from SpaceX headquarters. With employees cheering in the background, the casually-dressed trio explained what was happening in science-friendly language for a global audience — a stark difference from more traditional and stuffy coverage of space-related stories over the last five-and-a-half decades…