San Francisco Oct 8 (IANS) Elon Musk-founded private spaceflight company SpaceX on Sunday successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on land after delivering an Argentinian earth-observation satellite from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The "SAOCOM 1A" satellite was deployed about 12 minutes after lift-off SpaceX said.
Following stage separation Falcon 9 s first stage returned to land at SpaceX s Landing Zone 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base marking the 30th successful landing of a rocket booster for the company.
But this was SpaceX s first land landing on the West Coast. Its previous West Coast landings had all taken place on the company s drone ships in the Pacific Ocean.
Operated by Argentina s Space Agency the National Commission on Space Activities (CONAE) the satellite carries an active instrument consisting of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) which works in the microwave range of the electromagnetic spectrum particularly the L-band.
The mission s main purpose is to gather soil moisture information.

--IANS gb/vm