The SpaceX fairing recovery program was an experimental program by SpaceX, begun in 2017 in an effort to economically recover and reuse expended launch vehicle payload fairings from suborbital space. The experimental program became an operational program as, by late 2020, the company was routinely recovering fairings from many flights, and by 2021 were successfully refurbishing and reflying previously flown fairings on the majority of their satellite launches. During the early years of the program, SpaceX attempted to catch the descending payload fairings, under parachute, in a very large net on a moving ship in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Space Coast of Florida. Two former platform supply vessels—Ms. Tree, formerly known as Mr. Steven, and its sister ship, Ms. Chief—were chartered by SpaceX and used 2018–2021 as experimental platforms for recovery of rocket fairings from Falcon 9 orbital launch trajectories. These fast ships were retrofitted with large nets intended to catch fairings—and prevent the fairings from making contact with seawater—as part of an iterative development program to create technology that will eventually allow rocket payload fairings to be economically reused and reflown. Ms. Tree was used for SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing recovery experiments on a number of occasions in 2018 and early 2019, while named Mr. Steven. Ms. Tree first successfully caught a fairing on 25 June 2019 during Falcon Heavy launch 3, which carried the DoD's STP-2 mission. This was the ship's first fairing recovery voyage after its renaming, change of ownership, and net upgrade. By 2020, the program reached operational status where fairings from most Falcon 9 satellite launches were recovered, either "in the net" or from the water, and for the first time, both fairing halves of a single flight were caught in the nets of two different ships. The final fairing that was successfully caught in a net was in October 2020. In early 2021, the nets were removed from the two fast ships and SpaceX ended the ship leases, with both ships returned to their owner. SpaceX found that recovery of the fairings floating on the ocean surface was adequate to support economic reuse of payload fairings on subsequent Falcon 9 launches. After the end of the experimental "catch" recovery program, SpaceX entered an operational phase and as of April 2021 was using the contracted ships Shelia Bordelon and Hos Briarwood to recover parachute-descended payload fairings that reached the sea surface in good condition using ship mounted cranes. In May 2021, SpaceX purchased and began converting two offshore supply ships named Ella G and Ingrid for towing and supporting droneships as well as fairing recovery operations on the east coast. They are registered to Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked company that also owns Elon Musk's private jet. These two ships were renamed in honor of Demo-2 astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken as Doug and Bob respectively for their contribution to SpaceX's Crew Dragon development. Currently, both support ships Bob and Doug are operating out of Port Canaveral, Florida along with other SpaceX recovery assets. To ease the recovery of these fairings out of water, SpaceX bought two small fast boats in February 2022, Maverick and Goose, named for Top Gun characters Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), for both of these multipurpose ships. SpaceX performs some amount of cleaning and refurbishing before using the previously flown fairings on a subsequent flight. SpaceX has reflown fairing halves more than 300 times, with one being reflown for 36 times.
History
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