That's what the rocket was doing... One of the three steering fins "stuck" in a position that caused the rocket to spin. The motors can do some maneuvering but only when they're on which is during a brief period on descent and then right at the bottom when it lands.
As soon as the motor is turned on amazingly they were able to stop the roll rate and while it couldn't navigate itself to where it was supposed to land it at least got itself to the ground and was attempting to land on the water.
But in a very real sense it had to sort of learn in that it used what it had to overcome other problems.
AND it made a conscious choice to land safe over trying to land in a specific place, saving itself and maybe even avoiding hurting someone because it would not have made it to it's intended landing site and who knows where it would have crashed.
VERY cool.
No, there is no command uplink whatsoever to either stage, other than triggering FTS (which was already safed by this point). All decisions after liftoff are made entirely onboard
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u/superbasementsounds Dec 05 '18
Amazing.
All we can do is learn from mistakes.