The Falcon 9 rocket that launched NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX's first crew mission in 2020 launched and landed for the 19th and final time just before Christmas, then tipped over on its recovery ship during the trip back to Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This particular booster, known by the tail number B1058, was special among SpaceX's fleet of reusable rockets. It was the fleet leader, having tallied 19 missions over the course of more than three-and-a-half years. More importantly, it was the rocket that thundered into space on May 30, 2020, on a flight that made history on several counts.
It was the first time a commercial rocket and spacecraft launched people into orbit, and ended a nine-year gap in America's ability to send astronauts into orbit from US soil, following the retirement of the space shuttle. This mission, known as Demo-2 and launched by SpaceX under contract with NASA, ended US reliance on Russian rockets to send crews to the International Space Station.
SpaceX recovered the booster on one of its offshore landing platforms after the historic launch in May 2020, while the Falcon 9's upper stage fired into orbit with the Crew Dragon spacecraft containing Hurley and Behnken. Then, the rocket went into SpaceX's fleet rotation to launch 18 more times, primarily on missions to deploy Starlink Internet satellites.
Hurley, who commanded the Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Demo-2 mission, kept up with the booster's exploits well after his return to Earth. He regularly exchanged text messages with Behnken and Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX's vice president of launch, as the rocket just kept flying.
“For Bob and I, that particular booster was always pretty special for a lot of reasons," said Hurley, a veteran Marine Corps fighter pilot who retired from NASA's astronaut corps in 2021. He now works at Northrop Grumman.
An inauspicious ending
Hurley told Ars he would like to see the booster's remains displayed in a museum alongside the Crew Dragon spacecraft (named Endeavour) he and Behnken flew in 2020. "In a perfect world, I’d love to see Endeavour and at least now part of that booster in the Smithsonian or in a museum somewhere," he said.
“It’s kind of a bummer," Hurley told Ars. But he understands SpaceX got a lot of use out of this rocket. SpaceX also has a lot of love for Hurley and Behnken. The company named two of its recovery ships for payload fairings "Bob" and "Doug" after the astronaut duo.
“SpaceX has got a business to run," he said. "I think, at this point, certainly Endeavour is going to fly more, but this booster isn’t, so hopefully they can find a spot to display it somewhere. Even part of it would look kind of cool somewhere. They could figure something out ... People, I think, can get a lot of inspiration from seeing stuff that’s actually flown in space, and being able to get right up close to it, I think, is a big deal to a lot of people.”
The 19th launch of this booster on December 23 was just as successful as the previous 18, with a smooth climb into space before shutting down its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines. The booster coasted to the highest point in its trajectory—72 miles (116 kilometers)—before Earth's gravity pulled it back into the atmosphere.
Two engine burns slowed the rocket as it descended toward SpaceX's drone ship positioned near the Bahamas, and then four carbon-fiber legs deployed moments before an on-target touchdown. Then, as usual, the recovery vessel started its slow journey back to Florida with the 15-story-tall booster standing vertically.
Early on December 25, the booster tipped over on the drone ship due to high winds and waves, SpaceX said. This rocket, which was built nearly five years ago, didn't have SpaceX's newest design of landing legs, which can self-level to prevent toppling at sea.
A day later, the drone ship sailed into Port Canaveral, just south of SpaceX's launch pads, with the rocket's wreckage on the deck. The upper two-thirds of the booster, comprising its liquid oxygen tank, was missing, presumably left to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The remaining parts of the rocket were badly mangled, with bent landing legs and buckled engine nozzles.
Depending on how you count them, this booster launched nearly 870 satellites, mostly Starlinks, plus Hurley and Behnken on the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission. It lofted more than 260 metric tons of payload into orbit. Its 19 flights match the number of missions SpaceX's chief US competitor, United Launch Alliance, has launched since May 30, 2020.
Dontchev, SpaceX's vice president of launch, wrote on the social media site X that it was "super disappointing and sad" to lose the booster after so many missions.
"Tippy boosters occur when you get a certain set of landing conditions that lead to the legs having uneven loading," he wrote. "Heavy wind or sea state then cause the booster to teeter and slide which can lead to even worse leg loading."
SpaceX has a robotic device, called an "octagrabber," to secure rockets to the drone ship's deck after landing. But with heavy winds or high seas, it's "super challenging" to secure the booster, he continued.
The new self-leveling legs are now on most of SpaceX's rockets, but B1058, given its age, was not outfitted with the upgrade, according to Dontchev.
"It met its fate when it hit intense wind and waves resulting in failure of a partially secured OG (octagrabber) less than 100 miles from home," he added. "One thing is for sure… we will make lemonade out of lemons and learn as much as possible from historic 1058 on our path to aircraft like operations."
SpaceX technicians hoisted the rocket's wreckage from the drone ship in the days after it returned to Florida. Jon Edwards, SpaceX's vice president of Falcon launch vehicles, said the booster is not finished with its service. SpaceX has three other boosters in its active Falcon 9 fleet with 17 missions each and several more in double digits. Engineers would like to see how well SpaceX's most-flown rocket stood up to 19 flights as the company is expected to fly a booster for a 20th time, and probably more, this year.
"We are planning to salvage the engines and do life-leader inspections on the remaining hardware," he wrote on X. "There is still quite a bit of value in this booster. We will not let it go to waste."
Once that is done, as Indiana Jones might say, perhaps it belongs in a museum.
“Hopefully they can do something because this is a little bit of an inauspicious way to end its flying career, with half of it down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean," said Hurley.
