About 10 minutes after posting the video of the lift off on its Twitter feed, SpaceX tweeted that the rocket’s first stage booster had landed on its drunken ship, Just Read the Direction, located in the Atlantic Ocean.
The booster detaches after climbing and exercises a flip, allowing it to use its engines and “grid fins” to move itself towards a soft landing on the droneship.
The reusable booster has been recovered seven times, SpaceX said.
Sunday’s recovery was the 69th time the company has recovered a first-stage Falcon 9 booster.
Shortly after 1 p.m., SpaceX tweeted that the rocket’s latest payload, an SXM-7 satellite for SiriusXM, had been successfully deployed.
Starship SN8 sailed from South Texas on Wednesday, before returning to its starting position before climbing the Gulf of Mexico, where it crashed into the ground and exploded.
“The high pressure did not accelerate due to low pressure in the fuel header tank during landing, which resulted in a hard (and interesting!) Landing,” SpaceX said in a statement.
SpaceX asked for data on how Starship SN8 could re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere after returning from an outer mission and move itself to a correct landing point. Katuria described the mission as a success.
“The pressure of the fill header tank was low during the landing burn, which caused the touchdown speed to be high and the RUD, but we got all the data we needed!” He said in a tweet.
RUD stands for “Rapid Undead Dissociable” – a great way to say “crashed.”
CNN’s Jackie Watts contributed to this report.
