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HandWiki. Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/31499 (accessed on 11 October 2026).
HandWiki. Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/31499. Accessed October 11, 2026.
HandWiki. "Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/31499 (accessed October 11, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, October 27). Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/31499
HandWiki. "Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship." Encyclopedia. Web. 27 October, 2022.
Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship
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The content is sourced from: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Engineering:Autonomous_spaceport_drone_ship

An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is an ocean-going vessel derived from a deck barge, outfitted with station-keeping engines and a large landing platform. Construction of such ships was commissioned by aerospace company SpaceX to allow for recovery of rocket first-stages at sea for high-velocity missions which do not carry enough fuel to return to the launch site after lofting spacecraft onto an orbital trajectory. SpaceX has two operational drone ships and has a third under construction as of early 2018. Just Read the Instructions operates in the Pacific for launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base ; Of Course I Still Love You operates in the Atlantic for launches from Cape Canaveral. A Shortfall of Gravitas is under construction. (As of August 2018), 23 Falcon 9 flights have attempted to land on a drone ship, with 17 of them succeeding. The ASDS ships are a key component of the SpaceX reusable launch system development program which aims to significantly lower the price of space launch services through "full and rapid reusability." Any flights going to geostationary orbit or exceeding escape velocity will require landing at sea, encompassing about half of SpaceX missions.

geostationary orbit reusability. spacex

References

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  2. Foust, Jeff (25 October 2014). "Next Falcon 9 Launch Could See First-stage Platform Landing". Space News. http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/42305next-falcon-9-launch-could-see-first-stage-platform-landing. Retrieved 25 October 2014. 
  3. Bullis, Kevin (26 October 2014). "SpaceX Plans to Start Reusing Rockets Next Year". MIT Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532066/spacex-plans-to-start-reusing-rockets-next-year/. Retrieved 25 October 2014. 
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  20. Pasztor, Andy (17 January 2016). "SpaceX Stumbles, as Booster Landing Fails". Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacexstumbles-as-booster-suffers-hard-barge-landing-1453062105. Retrieved 19 January 2016. 
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  27. .Shotwell, Gwynne (3 February 2016). Gwynne Shotwell comments at Commercial Space Transportation Conference. Commercial Spaceflight. Event occurs at 2:43:15–3:10:05. Retrieved 4 February 2016. Those are GoPro cameras by the way, unbelievable technology. We fly many of them. ... Our third attempt to land on a drone ship ... this past January ... we did stick the landing, we stuck it and then we unstuck it. ... I love these videos. I think these videos are great! You learn so much from this activity. ... for all of you curmudgeons who say that was a failure, you're totally wrong. We landed. We broke a leg. We learned a little bit. And we're going to land again. ... this is the previous version of the rocket. The landing legs weren't quite as robust ... from a previous design era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT7_iySwP8?t=9000
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  42. Musk, Elon (14 April 2015). "Ascent successful...". Twitter.com. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849. 
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