SpaceX launches its first recycled rocket

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched and then retrieved its fi rst recycled rocket Thursday, the biggest leap yet in its bid to drive down costs and speed up fl ights.

The Falcon 9 blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, hoisting a broadcasting satellite into the clear early evening sky on the historic rocket refl ight.

It was the fi rst time that SpaceX founder Elon Musk tried to fl y a booster that soared before on an orbital mission. He was at a loss for words after the booster landed on the bull’s-eye of the ocean platform following liftoff, just off the east Florida coast.

Musk called it an “incredible milestone in the history of space” after the booster touchdown.

capital early Friday after the government released the body of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader, to the North. The exchange ended a bitter diplomatic battle between the two countries more than a month after Kim’s murder at Kuala Lumpur’s airport.

Following negotiations that he described as “very sensitive,” Prime Minister Najib Razak said Malaysia agreed to release the body in exchange for the return of the nine Malaysians held in Pyongyang.

The Malaysians, three embassy workers and six family members including four children, were flown home in a government jet.

The public poisoning of Kim, which took place amid crowds of travelers at Kuala Lumpur’s airport on Feb. 13, has prompted speculation that North Korea dispatched a hit squad to assassinate its leader’s estranged older halfbrother. It was determined that he was killed with a VX nerve agent, a banned chemical weapon.