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An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is a modified ocean-going barge equipped with propulsion systems to maintain precise position and a large landing platform. SpaceX developed these vessels to recover the first stage (also called the booster) of its launch vehicles. By recovering and reusing these boosters, SpaceX has significantly ...
Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship, in port in January 2015. A large floating landing platform for launches where the first stage does not have sufficient fuel to return to the launch site. As of 2022, SpaceX built three autonomous spaceport drone ships, one operating the West coast and two on the East coast of the United States.
The vehicle landed aboard the autonomous spaceport drone ship Of Course I Still Love You approximately eight and a half minutes after launch. [2] Normally, first stages supporting CRS missions land at LZ-1 , however a failed static fire of a Crew Dragon contaminated the landing pad.
Later tests attempted to land the rocket precisely on an autonomous spaceport drone ship (a barge commissioned by SpaceX to provide a stable landing surface at sea) or at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1), a concrete pad at Cape Canaveral. The first ground landing at LZ-1 succeeded in December 2015, and the first landing at sea on a drone ship in April 2016.
In May 2017, construction on a second, smaller pad began, called Landing Zone 2. This pad is located about 1,017 feet (310 m) to the northwest of the first pad and is used for landing Falcon Heavy side boosters. [12] By June 2017, the landing pad was modified with a radar reflective paint, to aid with landing precision. [13]
Gravity-1 launch in January 2024. A floating launch vehicle operations platform is a marine vessel used for launch or landing operations of an orbital launch vehicle by a launch service provider: putting satellites into orbit around Earth or another celestial body, or recovering first-stage boosters from orbital-class flights by making a propulsive landing on the platform.
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SpaceX attempted numerous over-water landings, both over the sea, resulting in soft landings into the water, and onto specialized Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships, barges modified to be landing platforms. None were completely successful. SpaceX eventually succeeded in landing a production vertical-landing rocket on land in late 2015.