Long Beach, we have splashdowns.
SpaceX announced that it will be moving its Dragon spacecraft splashdowns from Florida to Long Beach in 2025.
The Dragon spacecraft can fly astronauts and cargo to and from Earth’s orbit and is the first private spacecraft to take humans to the space station, according to SpaceX.
In a post on X, Mayor of Long Beach Rex Richardson wrote “Excited to share a Space Beach update! Long Beach will be the new home to @SpaceX’s Dragon recovery vessel as their West Coast Recovery Operations team based out of the @portoflongbeach will welcome back both @NASA and other private astronauts who are returning to Earth from orbit and beyond.”
The spacecraft splashdowns are designated areas for the spacecraft to land when returning from orbit.
Dragon recovery operations were moved to the East Coast in 2019. SpaceX to move operations to the West Coast to “fully eliminate the risk of trunk debris landing on populated areas without increasing risk to Dragon crew or the public.”
This comes after trunk debris was found in Australia and other land. The trunk of the Dragon is an unpressurized expendable section that contains hardware used for spacecraft power and cooling while in orbit.
The recovery vessel will now move to the Pacific where SpaceX will continue using its existing facilities in the Port of Long Beach.
