Over the weekend, SpaceX made its first attempt at landing a reusable Falcon 9 rocket on an autonomous drone barge floating in the Atlantic. Unfortunately, not everything went perfectly. CEO Elon Musk tweeted the following on Tuesday:
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
“Landed hard” is a bit of an understatement, though. Earlier today, Musk posted a Vine video of the rocket exploding on the landing pad just before it touched down.
According to Musk, the reason the landing didn’t go as planned was that the rocket’s fins — a newly-added feature designed to steer the rocket into position as it comes back down to Earth — ran out of hydraulic fluid just before the landing, making them about “10% off.”
Grid fins worked extremely well from hypersonic velocity to subsonic, but ran out of hydraulic fluid right before landing.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2015
It wasn’t quite what SpaceX was hoping for, but even so, the fact that it was able to come this close to a successful ocean landing is still rather impressive. Lessons learned from this botched trial will help the company make critical adjustments for the next launch, which is currently planned for a yet-to-be-determined date in February.
Upcoming flight already has 50% more hydraulic fluid, so should have plenty of margin for landing attempt next month. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2015
If SpaceX can successfully land and recover a rocket, it will have huge implications for the future of space travel. Stay tuned — the next attempt is planned for about 2 or 3 weeks from now.
