Musk said the landing appeared close to perfect and the company 'could not have asked for a better mission or a better day.'

The top officer at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, noted that the returning booster 'placed the exclamation mark on 2015.'

'This was a first for us at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and I can't even begin to describe the excitement the team feels right now having been a part of this historic first-stage rocket landing,' Monteith said in a statement.

Nasa applauded the feat. 'Congratulations @SpaceX on your successful vertical landing of the first stage back on Earth!' Nasa said in a tweet.

Competitor Jeff Bezos, who achieved a similar success last month, tweeted: 'Congrats on landing Falcon's suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!'

Musk striving to revolutionize the rocket industry, which currently loses many millions of dollars in jettisoned machinery and sophisticated rocket components after each launch.

What's significant is that this was a useful mission, Musk noted, not merely a practice flight. 'We achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that actually deployed 11 satellites,' he said.

A view of space just before the satellites were deployed. In this image, the Merlin 10 Vacuum engine has started