Yesterday, SpaceX announced that ASDS ‘Just Read The Instructions’ has caught its last Falcon 9 booster. SpaceX announced Tuesday, April 21, that after 156 successful Falcon 9 landings, the droneship (JRTI) will now support Starship operations full-time. That ends an illustrious career as the landing point for 156 Falcon 9 missions, as well as a familiar site in the Port when it wasn’t out to sea.
The announcement followed JRTI’s recovery of booster B1095.7 from the GPS III-8 “Hedy Lamar” mission for the U.S. Space Force, its 156th landing. “After 156 successful Falcon 9 landings, Just Read the Instructions will be fully dedicated to support Starship operations going forward,” SpaceX said on X.
The Second JRTI
Today’s JRTI is actually the second SpaceX droneship by that name. The original was a converted Marmac 300 barge deployed from the Port of Jacksonville for two experimental landings in early 2015. Neither succeeded. The CRS-5 booster came in hot and tipped over. The CRS-6 booster toppled and exploded on the deck in April, damaging the ship beyond economical repair. SpaceX retired the original JRTI the following month and handed its duties to the newly built ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ OCSILY is still in service today on the west coast.
The Marmac 303, today’s JRTI, was built alongside OCISLY in a Louisiana shipyard. She first operated from the Port of Los Angeles, supporting Vandenberg launches over the Pacific. In August 2019 she transited the Panama Canal, relocated to Port Canaveral, and returned to service in June 2020 after a thruster and equipment refit.
Notable JRTI Landings
| Mission | Date | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Jason-3 | January 17, 2016 | JRTI’s first use as a landing platform. The booster touched down on the deck off the California coast, but a lockout collet failed to engage on one landing leg and the stage tipped over. |
| Iridium-1 | January 14, 2017 | The first successful droneship landing in the Pacific, from Vandenberg Air Force Base. |
| Starlink v1.0 L7 | June 4, 2020 | JRTI’s first Atlantic recovery after her East Coast move, and the first time a Falcon 9 booster landed after a fifth flight. |
| Inspiration4 | September 15, 2021 | The first all-civilian crewed orbital mission. Booster B1062 landed on JRTI while Crew Dragon Resilience carried Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, and Chris Sembroski to a 585-km orbit, then the highest human spaceflight since the final Hubble servicing mission and since surpassed by Polaris Dawn in 2024. |
| KPLO / Danuri | August 4, 2022 | The booster that sent South Korea’s first lunar probe to the Moon came home to JRTI. |
| Starlink Group 6-39 | February 2024 | Recovery of the heaviest payload ever flown on Falcon, 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites at roughly 17,500 kg. |
| Bahamas Landing | February 18, 2025 | The first international booster landing, off the coast of The Bahamas. |
| Starlink 10-56 | August 27, 2025 | SpaceX’s 400th droneship booster recovery. |
| GPS III-8 “Hedy Lamar” | April 21, 2026 | JRTI’s 156th and final Falcon landing. |
What’s Next?
JRTI will return B1095.7 to Port Canaveral over the coming days for offload. Conversion work for its new role will follow. How the vessel will be outfitted to cradle a 50-meter Starship or 70-meter Super Heavy for open-ocean transit (if those are its new duties) remains to be seen; SpaceX has not released details. ASOG will take over solo Falcon coverage on the East Coast starting with the next Cape launch.
For those who have watched JRTI’s familiar silhouette leave Port Canaveral ahead of a launch weekend and return days later with a soot-streaked Falcon 9 on its deck, it is the end of a particular ritual. The venerable barge is not going anywhere. It is just changing its cargo.
Author: Charles Boyer
NASA kid from Cocoa Beach, FL, born of Project Apollo parents and family. I’m a writer and photographer sharing the story of spaceflight from the Eastern Range here in Florida.
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