SpaceX completes 400th Falcon booster landing on a drone ship – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster completes a landing on the droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ during the Starlink 10-56 mission on Aug. 27, 2025. The recovery was the 400th landing of an orbital class rocket. Image: SpaceX

A Falcon 9 rocket placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit shortly after sunrise on Wednesday and scored the 400th successful drone ship landing for SpaceX’s reusable first stage booster.

The achievement came about eight and a half minutes into the Starlink 10-56 mission, which lifted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:10 a.m. EDT (1110 UTC).

The B1095 first stage booster, making its second flight, touched down on the drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ (JRTI) stationed in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Carolinas.

The majority of the 400 aquatic landings have occurred on SpaceX’s drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ (OCISLY), which along with JRTI entered service in 2015.

The first successful recovery of a Falcon 9 actually occurred on land in December 2015. It wasn’t until the launch of SpaceX’s eighth Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-8) mission to the International Space Station on April 8, 2016, that the company managed to successfully land at sea. The successful landing on OCISLY followed a string of failed attempts, including one that damaged beyond repair the first drone ship to bear the name JRTI.



SpaceX’s fleet of now three drone ships, which include ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ are key to SpaceX’s ability to reuse its orbital rockets. In a mid-August post on X, formerly Twitter, Jon Edwards, SpaceX’s vice president of Falcon and Dragon, touted the economic vitality of booster recovery for the company.

“It’s easy to become complacent in this situation, which is concerning (e.g., the tortoise and the hare), so we must keep challenging ourselves to achieve higher launch rates, greater lift capability, and higher levels of rapid reusability,” Edwards said. “Eventually our competitors will show up, but when they do, we must ensure they are still far behind in our rearview mirror.”

One of those competitors, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, also built its New Glenn rocket to have boosters that perform propulsive landings on a marine vessel. The company tried to land its first booster, dubbed ’So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance,’ during its first flight in January 2025, but that proved unsuccessful.

Blue Origin will try again during its second launch, using the booster named ‘Never Tell Me the Odds.’ It will launch a pair of Mars-bound satellites for NASA and then aim to land on the vessel named ‘Jacklyn,’ after Bezos’ mother.

The Recovery Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) pictured on Blue Origin’s landing vessel, named ‘Jacklyn,’ after founder Jeff Bezos’ mother. ROV will deploy following a booster landing and provide power, communication and pneumatic links between the booster and Jacklyn, according to Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. Image: Blue Origin

Similarly, Rocket Lab also plans to perform propulsive landings with its Neutron rocket using a 400-foot-long landing platform that’s being built out by Bollinger Shipyards. The vessel called ‘Return on Investment’ is expected to debut in early 2026, according to a July 2025 statement from Rocket Lab. The company attempted a parachute recovery of the first stage of its Electron rocket. However plans to catch the descending rocket by helicopter did not work. Although boosters were subsequently fished out of the ocean after splashing down they were not re-flown. A single Rutherford engine was refurbished and reused.

Stoke Space also has plans for reusability with its Nova rocket, but it aims for it to be closer to SpaceX’s Starship rather than the Falcon 9 in that Stoke is aiming for full reusability. It will be launching from Space Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and is currently building out the pad with aims to have it operational by early 2026.

Some Chinese companies are also working to incorporate what’s referred to as Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL). LandSpace performed a 10 km (6.2 m) hop test in 2024 and Space Epoch completed what it called a successful flight recovery test mission, sending its Yuanxingzhe-1 rocket to a hight of about 2.5 km (1.6 m) in altitude before performing a controlled splashdown in the Yellow Sea.

Other companies, like United Launch Alliance are working on different models of reusing rocket parts. ULA is working towards a system that would sever the engine section of its Vulcan rocket and use an inflatable shield to protect it during reentry and allow teams to recover it from the water.

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