Almost exactly three days after taking off a few miles to the north at the Kennedy Space Center on SpaceX’s historic first crew launch, a 15-story-tall Falcon rocket booster returned to Florida’s Space Coast Tuesday aboard a football field-sized drone ship.

EDT (1800 GMT) Tuesday, and mariners carefully maneuvered the drone ship into position for a crane to hoist the Falcon 9 rocket booster off the vessel and into an onshore stand.

EDT (1922 GMT) Saturday from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on a test flight to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket switched off its nine Merlin engines around two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, then detached to allow the rocket’s upper stage to fire into orbit with the Crew Dragon capsule.

The first stage on the Crew Dragon Demo-2 launch was flying for the first time.

SpaceX’s reusable Falcon booster returns to port after crew launch