Before the rocket's second stage reached orbit, the Falcon 9's booster stage lit three of its engines to start a controlled descent to the Atlantic Ocean, targeting a zone a few hundred miles northeast of Cape Canaveral.
The 12-foot-diameter stage was supposed to extend four carbon fiber and aluminum honeycomb landing legs moments before falling into ocean. The rocket's engines are designed to adjust their throttle settings to achieve a gentle splashdown.
A recovery team was stationed near the expected splashdown zone to retrieve the Falcon 9's first stage, but SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said the rocket landed with a "kaboom" and disintegrated.
"Rocket booster reentry, landing burn & leg deploy were good, but lost hull integrity right after splashdown (aka kaboom)," Musk tweeted. "Detailed review of rocket telemetry needed to tell if due to initial splashdown or subsequent tip over and body slam."
Airborne trackers on Musk's private jet and a NASA WB-57 reconnaissance plane were also in the area to monitor the rocket's return.
The first stage recovery experiment was a bonus objective on Monday's flight, which was part of a $42.6 million two-launch contract package purchased by Orbcomm at a discount from SpaceX's advertised Falcon 9 launch prices.
Sounds like a failure but may not be. It could have made a perfect landing that would have been survivable if done on land but was immediately destroyed by wave action upon tipping over in the ocean.
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I doubt that booster shells are built to survive a tumble onto a lumpy surface, I would suspect it broke on impact, not due to subsequent wave action. It may not have even been capable of surviving putting down on a glass smooth sea, as it's gonna fall over and hit splat no matter.
I doubt that booster shells are built to survive a tumble onto a lumpy surface, I would suspect it broke on impact, not due to subsequent wave action. It may not have even been capable of surviving putting down on a glass smooth sea, as it's gonna fall over and hit splat no matter.
Not 100% sure on this. Way back in the early days of SpaceX the idea of recovery by parachute into the ocean was played with, so surviving a water landing was at one time part of the design criteria for the stage. And on their previous water landing attempt the post landing analysis indicates that the stage did survive, briefly, landing and tipping to horizontal. But the seas, much rougher the first time than this time, quickly broke it apart.
SpaceX also just announced their intention to shift launch activities to Brownsville Texas. Florida will then be downrange for an eastward launch, giving them the opportunity to land the first stage on terra firma.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” ~Benjamin Franklin
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." Winston Churchill
ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz Quad-Core CPU Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 G.Skill Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 Samsung 1TB 7200 SATA 3.0Gb/s HD x2
