SpaceX rocket booster retrieved from the ocean

It’s not every Friday that a 156-foot-tall SpaceX rocket booster is towed to Port Canaveral.

The Falcon 9 booster, which made a watery landing Wednesday following a mission to resupply the International Space Station, was retrieved from the water off the coast of the Cape late Friday morning.

The booster spent two days in the water while teams worked to retrieve it after a malfunction with its grid fins caused the booster to miss its target: the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Landing Zone 1. It was the first time a Falcon 9 booster had failed to make a ground landing. (The boosters also sometimes land on drone ships in the ocean.)

The rocket’s Dragon spacecraft made it safely to space, where it’s expected to dock at the space station Saturday morning with more than 5,600 pounds of supplies.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on Twitter Wednesday he believed the booster could still be salvaged and reused for an “internal” SpaceX launch. The booster, No. B1050, was still transmitting data back to SpaceX after it landed in the water.

The trouble started shortly after Wednesday’s afternoon launch, when the hydraulic system on the booster’s grid fins failed, Musk tweeted, causing it to start spinning rapidly toward the Atlantic Ocean. The booster’s engines managed to slow it down and stabilize it before the booster extended its landing legs, hit the surface and toppled over.

In a post-launch press briefing, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, Hans Koenigsmann, said the booster worked as designed, targeting the water — instead of land or buildings — when it sensed a malfunction.