![]() ![]() ![]() The booster used in Wednesday's CRS-16 mission underwent its maiden launch, while the booster carrying 64 small satellites from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base made a historic third journey to space earlier this week. ![]() EDT from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, followed by a first-stage booster landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Stations Landing Zone 1. Update 11:10AM ET: This article has been updated to correct an error regarding the reusable booster. Update: Liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 at 5:37 p.m. Still, SpaceX reckons the Falcon 9 design has got another 300-odd missions left in it before it retires, assuming of course the missed landing won't set future launches back. SpaceX had previously had designs on making the rocket's second stage reusable as well, but this was scrapped to focus on the development of the Big Falcon Rocket instead. Obviously, things could have been much worse, but the mishap does demonstrate the challenges involved in reusing rockets. Footage captured by Twitch streamer DazValdez reveals the moment the booster took a tumble. It was the largest single collection of spacecraft to launch from the US, but also marked the first time a single booster had ever sent a rocket to orbit on three separate occasions.Īccording to a tweet by Elon Musk, the Falcon 9's reusable booster, which underwent its maiden launch, missed the landing zone at Cape Canaveral because of a stalled hydraulic pump on the grid fin. Just two days previous, SpaceX successfully completed its Spaceflight SSO-A: SmallSat Express mission, with a Falcon 9 sending 64 small satellites from a variety of customers, including clients from Brazil, Canada, South Korea and the UK. Unfortunately, though, the milestone was marred by a missed landing of the booster's first stage.Īlthough it became SpaceX's sixth ever landing failure, the malfunction was the company's first since June 2016, following a run of 26 straight successes. On Wednesday, the rocket successfully launched for a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Nathan Ingraham contributed to this report.SpaceX has made sure it's got its money's worth out of the Falcon 9. SpaceX will likely learn quite a bit from this failure, and be better prepared to land all three boosters next time, which will probably be in three to four months. Landing the first stages is always a secondary objective, and no one should overlook the fact that the company was able to land two of the three boosters at once. The goal of this demo launch was to prove that the Falcon Heavy was ready for flight, and it more than accomplished that. This shouldn't take away from SpaceX's spectacular achievement today. Without any context, though, it was hard to know for certain if they were talking about communications or the rocket itself. Audio from an unpublished YouTube video also seemed to confirm the loss of the center core "we lost the center core" can be clearly heard on the recording. The video feed from the center core cut out, and we didn't hear anything official in the intervening three-plus hours. It's been suspected that the core was lost since just after the other two rockets landed successfully. if the cameras didn't get blown up as well." That should be worth seeing on video: "We have the video," Musk confirmed, "it sounds like some pretty fun footage. "It was enough to take out two thrusters and shower the deck with shrapnel," Musk said. Because of that, the core apparently hit the water at 300MPH, and it was about 100 meters from the ship. The center core obviously didn't land on the drone ship" and he said that "we're looking at the issue." Musk says that the core ran out of propellant, which kept the core from being able to slow down as much as it needed for landing. But the fate of the core booster was unclear now it appears that the center booster, which was supposed to land on a drone ship, was lost.Įlon Musk said on a conference call with reporters that the launch "seems to have gone as well as one could have hoped with the exception of center core. What's more, it landed the two flanking boosters in perfect synchronized formation. SpaceX pulled off quite the feat today when it launched the Falcon Heavy rocket. ![]()
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