VIDEO: SpaceX nails drone ship soft landing

SpaceX tweeted this image of rocket on barge

APRIL 8, 2016 — Elon Musk’s SpaceX has at last succeeded in successfully soft landing the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on its autonomous space port drone ship.

Four previous attempts to land the reusable first stage on the converted barge Just Read the Instructions failed.This time around, everything went to plan — using a new drone barge, called Of Course I  Still Love You.

The original barge apparently sustained extensive damage in the previous failed attempt. This time things went very differently.

The photo tweeted by SpaceX makes the rocket look good enough to go again — which, of course, is what this is all about as re-usable booster stages are key to reducing the cost of space launches.

Original autonomous space port drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” (left) and the ship used today “Of Course I Still Love You” look very similar.

Video from NASA TV showed the success of today’s apparently perfect landing.

Congrats to the @SpaceX team & @ElonMusk! Way to stick the landing & send #Dragon to @Space_Station. https://t.co/TCJCQljJBZ

— NASA (@NASA) April 8, 2016