Record-breaking, historic SpaceX booster topples on way back to Florida port

Rough weather at sea caused the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster that had successfully landed a record 19 times to topple while getting a ride back to Florida.

SpaceX announced late Monday that the booster, which first flew on the historic Demo-2 mission in 2020 that took NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into space, and still displays the NASA “worm” logo on its side, had made its final flight.

“During transport back to Port early this morning, the booster tipped over on the droneship due to high winds and waves. Newer Falcon boosters have upgraded landing legs with the capability to self-level and mitigate this type of issue,” SpaceX posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Images on social media showed the booster having fallen to one side, with only the bottom portion of what had been the 135-foot-tall fuselage still on board the droneship Just Read the Instructions as it made its way into Port Canaveral on Tuesday morning.

“We are planning to salvage the engines and do life leader inspections on the remaining hardware,” said SpaceX’s Jon Edwards, vice president for Falcon Launch Vehicles. “There is still quite a bit of value in this booster. We will not let it go to waste.”

The booster’s final flight occurred early Saturday, shuttling up another 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites before making its final landing on the droneship.

The Crew Demo-2 flight on May 30, 2020, marked the first return to flight of humans from the Space Coast since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. It paved the way for SpaceX’s regular commercial crew and private missions that have to date flown 42 humans to space across 11 missions.

The historic flight prompted NASA to use not only the agency’s normal “meatball” logo of the red chevron piercing a blue sphere, but also the return of the NASA “worm” logo first seen in 1975 and retired from use on spacecraft in 1992.

The booster went on to fly the ANASIS-11, CRS-21, Transporter-1, Transporter-3 and 14 Starlink missions.

“This one reusable rocket booster alone launched to orbit 2 astronauts and more than 860 satellites — totaling 260+ metric tons — in ~3.5 years,” SpaceX posted to X.

SpaceX had its first successful booster recovery just over eight years ago and has since made 256 successful landings among Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Among boosters for which it attempted recovery landings, it had not lost one since February 2021.

SpaceX’s reusability efforts have allowed it to approach 100 launches for the year among its Florida and California facilities. From the Space Coast alone, SpaceX has managed 66 of the 70 launches, and has at least one more slated before the new year.

That one will be a Falcon Heavy scheduled for liftoff from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A during a four-hour window from 7 to 11 p.m. on Thursday on the USSF-52 mission for the Space Force carrying up the secretive X-37B spacecraft for what’s expected to be a multiyear orbital mission.

Two of the three boosters for that launch will attempt recovery landings at Canaveral’s Landing Zones 1 and 2, and with it bring the double sonic booms that can be heard across much of the Space Coast and other parts of Central Florida.

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