On Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched an advanced European weather satellite.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the MTG-Sounder (MTG-S1) satellite.
The rocket's first stage returned to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship "Just Read the Instructions," in the Atlantic Ocean.
It was the ninth launch and landing for this booster.Among the booster's previous flights were the Fram2 private astronaut mission, the Crew-9 flight to the International Space Station for NASA and a January 2025 launch that sent two private landers toward the moon: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience.