Last week, SpaceX attempted to do something that few people had ever even thought of doing before: launching a rocket to deploy a supply ship to the International Space Station, and then landing said rocket on a football field-sized barge in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Everything went according to plan until the very end of the test flight. Shortly after the Falcon was scheduled to land, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made the following tweet:
Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2015
The tweet led to all kinds of speculation from people wondering just how hard the landing actually was. So on Friday (January 16), SpaceX released footage of the landing. Check it out below:
Although many people are automatically tagging the mission a failure because of the crash landing, those familiar with the industry are actually saying the mission was a major success.
Experts were particularly impressed by the fact that the rocket was able to successfully navigate itself from 50 miles above Earth’s surface to a (relatively) tiny floating target in the middle of the ocean.
“It is indeed an incredible success that on such an early attempt they were able to get the first stage so close to the intended landing pad, and so close to a successful landing!”,
said Jim Bell – a professor at Arizona State’s School of Earth and Space Exploration – in an email to FoxNews.
The Falcon also safely deployed the Dragon spacecraft, which arrived at the ISS on January 12 carrying around 5,000 pounds of water, food, scientific experiments, technology, and other supplies to the astronauts stationed there.
Clik here to view.
January 10, 2015: The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida (Photo: Scott Audette/Reuters)
Within hours of the crash landing on January 10, SpaceX had already diagnosed the problem: apparently, the Falcon’s guiding fins (which help to steer and slow the rocket down) ran out of hydraulic fluid before the rocket reached the floating platform.
Without this fluid, the fins were unable to make the extremely precise adjustments necessary for the landing. A few hours after the crash, Musk tweeted that the next test flight (scheduled for January 29) will have 50% more hydraulic fluid to avoid this issue.
Speaking to FoxNews about the test flight, Roger Franzen, technical manager of the Giant Magellan Telescope at the Australian National University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory, had this to say:
“No one should underestimate the complexity of this engineering feat even as a hard landing and SpaceX should be applauded for the success that they achieved.”
(h/t Business Insider)