[UPDATED 8:00 pm with news that third landing attempt was aborted] Two out of three ain’t bad, if you’re trying something no one’s ever done before.

Landing on the narrow, pitching deck of a Navy aircraft carrier is one of the hardest things a human being can do. Today, for the first time in history, a robot did it — twice.

After all the VIPs and reporters had been hustled off the USS George H.W. Bush, however, a third attempt had to be aborted when the experimental X-47B electronic brain “self-detected a navigation computer anomaly,” a Navy spokesman emailed reporters this evening at 7:30. The drone diverted to a landing field ashore without further incident