Just Read the Instructions (JRTI) is a SpaceX autonomous spaceport droneship (ASDS). JRTI is a modified barge that is outfitted with a large landing platform, station-keeping thrusters, and other equipment to allow SpaceX to land boosters at sea on high-velocity missions that don’t carry enough fuel to allow for a return-to-launch-site landing.

Just Read the Instructions is named after a spacecraft from ‘The Player of Games‘, a novel from author Iain M. Banks’s Culture series.

Just Read the Instructions was originally based in California from 2015 to 2019 to support missions launching from Vandenburg Air Force Base. The droneship was then repositioned to Florida to support the increasing number of missions launched from Cape Canaveral. There was a two-year gap with no droneship available on the US West Coast before OCISLY was itself repositioned to take the role in 2021.

Just Read the Instructions is the second SpaceX droneship to use the name. The original pilot SpaceX droneship, operated for two experimental landings in the Atlantic Ocean in early 2015, used the same name but was retired and replaced by Of Course I Still Love You droneship in June 2015. The JRTI name was then given to the new droneship operating from California.

JRTI was constructed in a Louisiana shipyard, alongside Of Course I Still Love You droneship. To reach its new home in California the ship had to pass through the Panama Canal. The droneship was too wide to fit through the canal locks in its full design so the extra wing extensions – designed to provide a larger landing pad – had to be placed on deck to be installed upon final arrival in California.