Falcon 9 Booster Landing Coloring Page: Free PDF Sheet

Rocket Landings: Turning a Falling Booster Into a Vehicle That Lands

A Problem Rockets Had Never Solved

For the first half-century of spaceflight, rocket boosters simply fell into the ocean or burned up after launch, since no company had found an affordable way to slow a tall, top-heavy tube of metal down for a controlled landing. SpaceX spent years testing short low-altitude hops with an experimental vehicle nicknamed Grasshopper before ever attempting a real orbital landing.

December 2015: The First Successful Landing

SpaceX landed an orbital-class rocket booster upright for the first time on December 21, 2015, touching down on a concrete landing pad at Cape Canaveral just minutes after launching a payload into orbit. That single landing proved a rocket could deliver cargo to space and then fly itself home in one piece, something critics had called physically impossible only a few years earlier.

Why Some Boosters Land at Sea Instead

Missions that need extra fuel to reach a distant or heavy orbit often cannot spare enough propellant for the booster to fly all the way back to land, so SpaceX instead lands those boosters on a floating droneship positioned hundreds of miles out in the ocean. The company operates several named droneships, including "Just Read the Instructions" and "Of Course I Still Love You," both names borrowed from science fiction novels.

Grid Fins: Steering a Falling Rocket

Four small folding grid fins near the top of the booster swing open during descent and tilt in different directions to steer the falling rocket through the thickening atmosphere, working alongside a final engine burn that slows the booster just before touchdown. Early landing attempts sometimes ran out of hydraulic fluid for the fins mid-descent, a problem SpaceX solved by upgrading to an electric fin-actuation system.

The Legs That Only Appear Seconds Before Landing

The four landing legs stay folded tightly against the booster's body throughout launch and most of the descent, snapping open using pressurized nitrogen gas only a few seconds before touchdown to keep aerodynamic drag low during the fall. Cameras mounted on the booster capture the legs deploying in real time, footage SpaceX has shared publicly during many missions.

Reusing the Same Booster Again and Again

After landing, technicians inspect and refurbish the booster before stacking it onto a new second stage and payload for another flight, a process some Falcon 9 boosters have now repeated more than twenty times each. That reuse has cut the cost of many missions dramatically compared with the industry's old approach of building a brand new rocket for every single launch.

Named Droneships Waiting Out at Sea

SpaceX built its floating landing platforms from modified ocean barges, adding thrusters and a reinforced steel deck strong enough to absorb a returning booster's impact, then gave each one a whimsical name borrowed from science-fiction novelist Iain M. Banks. The company currently keeps droneships stationed off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts so a booster can land close to whichever launch site sent it into orbit.