SpaceX has been landing the first stage of its workhorse Falcon 9 booster since 2015, and the sight of the vehicle coming in for an upright touchdown, engines blazing, never gets old.
Most of the landings take place on a droneship waiting in the ocean, though occasionally SpaceX also lands the booster back near the launch site.
Earlier this week, the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company launched and landed a Falcon 9 booster — B1067 — for a record 32nd time, highlighting SpaceX’s ability to reuse its rockets.
But after the engines fall silent and the livestream ends, the booster becomes little more than an odd-shaped piece of cargo bobbing up and down on the waves, ahead of it a mundane voyage back to base.
A new video posted by NASASpaceFlight’s Elisar Priel shows some of the rather unglamorous and very ordinary sea journey of a first-stage Falcon 9 booster, this one the record-breaking B1067.
A Champion’s Return Home!
SpaceX Falcon 9 B1067-33, returned home to Port Canaveral following its record setting 32 launch, ending its 2025 launch mission schedule, with hopefully many more record breaking ahead for it in 2026.@NASASpaceflight https://t.co/BEepgAKwKe pic.twitter.com/f0SnI1XpGV
No, it’s not the most exciting footage, but it offers a behind-the-scenes look at what happens to the rocket once the fireworks end.
After a Falcon 9 booster returns to port, it’s lifted from the droneship and moved to a hangar where SpaceX engineers carefully inspect its structure and engines for wear and tear, as well as any serious damage.
Following the assessment, teams will make any necessary repairs or swap parts out ahead of robust testing for the booster’s next flight.
When the vehicle is ready, SpaceX planners will select a mission for it before integrating a new upper stage for the flight, which could involve anything from the deployment of another batch of Starlink satellites to a crewed mission bound for the space station.
The rocket is then transported back to the launch site, ready to repeat the cycle that begins with another launch and ends with another one of those routine rides home.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.