File:KSC-05-S-00047 (ksc 022805 htw srbrecovery).webm

English: How do we do Solid Rocket Booster retrieval? After the Solid Rocket Boosters have splashed down out in the ocean because those parachutes have let them down, we have to send out a couple of our ships in the NASA Navy -- either the Freedom Star or the Liberty Star -- and what they'll do is, they'll pull up beside the Solid Rocket Booster, they'll actually send some divers down to the bottom and they install a plug, and then we pump some of the water out that's gotten inside. And the booster goes from floating like this to what we call 'log mode.' The ships hook up to the Solid Rocket Boosters, tow them back out here to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where we lift them up out of the water. We clean them, inspect them, take them apart and put them on rail cars and send them back to our friends in Utah at Thiokol Corporation where they refill them with solid rocket propellant. They send them back to us, and we reuse the Solid Rocket Boosters. And that's how retrieval goes.