asds

An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is an ocean-going vessel derived from a deck barge, outfitted with station-keeping engines and a large landing platform and is autonomously controlled when on station for a landing. Construction of such ships was commissioned by aerospace company SpaceX to allow recovery of launch vehicle first stages at sea for missions that do not carry enough fuel to return to the launch site after boosting spacecraft onto an orbital or interplanetary trajectory.SpaceX has three operational drone ships: Just Read the Instructions (II) (JRTI) and A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), operating in the Atlantic for launches from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), operating in the Pacific for supporting missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base. JRTI operated in the Pacific Ocean for Vandenberg Air Force Base launches from 2016 to 2019 before leaving the Port of Los Angeles in August 2019.
The ASDS are a key early operational component in the SpaceX objective to significantly lower the price of space launch services through "full and rapid reusability" and were developed as part of the multi-year reusable rocket development program SpaceX undertook to engineer the technology. Any Falcon flights going to geostationary orbit or exceeding escape velocity require landing at sea, encompassing about half of SpaceX missions as of 2016.

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