SpaceX successfully landed a rocket on a drone ship

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch
(Image credit: NASA via Getty Images)

Elon Musk's private spaceflight company SpaceX launched a communications satellite into orbit early Sunday morning, its eighth successful flight in the last six months alone.

The rocket that boosted the satellite into space was also successfully retrieved, landing on a drone ship named Of Course I Still Love You in the ocean off the coast of Cape Canaveral. "Tonight, we're channeling our inner Simone Biles, and we're hoping to stick the landing," said SpaceX engineer Kate Tice before launch, referencing the matchless U.S. gymnast currently competing at the Rio Olympics.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.