SpaceX transports its landed Falcon 9 rocket to its temporary home in Florida

SpaceX's recently landed Falcon 9 rocket was transported to its new home yesterday at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The vehicle, which landed on a floating drone ship on May 6th after launching into space, was taken from Port Canaveral to SpaceX's hangar at Launch Complex 39A — a spaceport the company leases from NASA at Kennedy Space Center. There, the Falcon 9 joined the two other rockets that SpaceX has landed.

This rocket is the second Falcon 9 that has landed on a drone ship at sea. Prior to the vehicle's launch, SpaceX didn't have high expectations the rocket would stick the landing. The Falcon 9 had to launch a Japanese communication satellite into a very high orbit above Earth, so the vehicle was going particularly fast and burned up a lot of fuel during ascent. When it returned to Earth from space, the rocket hit the atmosphere at close to 4,000 miles per hour, according to SpaceX, and it landed with just 3 seconds of propellant to spare.