Elon Musk’s SpaceX does it again. Nails fourth landing.

Maybe one day it’ll be routine, so boring, as Elon Musk has said, that it’ll no longer benewsworthy. But for now his attempts to launch and then land rockets are still dramatic, asexciting as sporting events. On Friday evening, SpaceX pulled off another stunning landing ona ship 422 miles off the Florida coast that was broadcast in real time on its website.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted up from Cape Canaveral at 5:39 p.m., carrying a Thaicomcommercial communications satellite to orbit. Given the distance the rocket had  to travel todeliver its payload Friday, and the massive amount of energy it would take to get there, SpaceXhedged on the success of the return, saying that “the first stage will be subject to extremevelocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing challenging.”

But then the video showed the rocket screaming back from space, its engines firing to slow itdown. And then cameras from the ship showed it standing triumphantly once again.

Over the past couple of years Musk’s space company has been perfecting the difficult art oflanding rockets so they could be reused instead of being ditched into the ocean as had been thepractice since the 1960s-Apollo era.

Coming into Friday’s launch, which was postponed from Thursday after Musk said there was a”tiny glitch” with the rocket’s upper stage, SpaceX had pulled off landings three times. First, itlanded a stage at Cape Canaveral in December. Then it followed with two landings at sea thisspring. The rocket in last landing “took max damage, due to v high entry velocity,” Musktweeted this month.

When SpaceX became the first company to ever vertically land an orbital-class rocket, Musksaid he thought it would improve his chances of eventually getting to Mars, his ultimate goal.Being able to reuse rockets not only reduces the cost, but the technology is key to landing onthe Red Planet where there are no runways and the relatively thin atmosphere make landingstricky, especially for large masses.

Recently the company announced that it plans to land an unmanned Dragon capsule on Marsas soon as 2018. It’s an ambitious timeline, especially given that its Falcon Heavy rocket, whichwould carry the spacecraft, isn’t scheduled to have its maiden flight until later this year. But thecompany has been working on developing capsules that also land using their own power, thatis, firing their engines as a way to slow down before touching down softly.

Once a spunky startup, SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., has become a major force in theburgeoning space industry, with more than 4,000 employees, a backlog of orders to launchcommercial satellites and multi-billion dollar contracts with NASA to fly cargo and eventuallyastronauts to the International Space Station on its Falcon 9 rocket.

The Thaicom 8 satellite it delivered Thursday was made by Dulles-based Orbital ATK and isto serve Thailand, India and Africa.