Template:POTD/2023-04-08

Picture of the day

SpaceX CRS-8 was a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station that launched on April 8, 2016, at 20:43 UTC. It was the twenty-third flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, the tenth flight of a Dragon cargo spacecraft, and the eighth operational mission contracted to SpaceX by NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services program. After boosting the payload on its orbital trajectory, the rocket's first stage re-entered the denser layers of the atmosphere and landed vertically on the ocean landing platform Of Course I Still Love You nine minutes after liftoff (as pictured in this photograph), thus achieving a long-sought-after milestone in the SpaceX reusable launch system development program.Photograph credit: SpaceX