posted 02-07-2022 04:18 PM               

The vessel names on SpaceX's two Dragon recovery ships have been painted over.

I checked US [Coast Guard] databases and can confirm that GO Searcher and GO Navigator are being renamed to Megan and Shannon respectively, in honor of SpaceX's first two female astronauts.

This news comes sixth months after SpaceX chose to name their two new support vessels Bob and Doug.

I can't see any ownership paperwork filed but Searcher and Navigator are no longer listed on the Guice Offshore (GO) website. I would suspect SpaceX has bought the ships from GO.

posted 06-27-2025 04:23 PM               

Great job to all who sailed on M/V Megan and made the SpaceX human spaceflight program truly unique! We chartered Megan, then GO Searcher, in 2016 to learn how to recover payload fairings. After extensive modifications to support Dragon, we learned how to recover astronauts after human spaceflight missions with Megan – helping set the stage for the return of human spaceflight to the U.S. with Demo-2.

Megan recovered 24 astronauts, including the crews of the first fully commercial and first private astronaut missions to orbit. After the final East Coast Dragon recovery with Crew-9 in March, Megan sailed to Louisiana for retirement from the SpaceX fleet last week.

Fair winds and following seas Megan!!! Thank you for your service to Human Spaceflight!

P.S. Megan was named for astronaut Megan McArthur, the second woman to fly on Dragon.