SpaceX conducted a mission earlier today to launch two communications satellites into orbit. It was going to land the rocket on a drone ship in the sea but things didn’t go according to plan. SpaceX’s latest rocket booster landing has failed and the Falcon 9 rocket had a crash landing on the barge, ending the company’s streak of successful landings of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket.
After multiple failures, SpaceX finally nailed the drone ship landing earlier this year in April. The company then went on to successfully land the rocket on the floating drone barge multiple times after that. It recently announced plans to relaunch one of those reusable rockets later this year.
SpaceX wasn’t lucky this time around. Founder Elon Musk confirmed the failed landing on Twitter, indicating that perhaps the thrust on one of the rocket’s three landing engines might have been too low. He also said that the company is working on upgrades to enable the rocket to make up for a thrust shortfall and expects the fix to be implemented a few months down the road.
There were no problems with the mission itself. The rocket was launched perfectly to deliver two Boeing Ku-band satellites. The booster entered the Earth’s atmosphere after delivering the payload and then attempted the landing on the floating drone ship. It was only the drone ship landing that was botched, and it goes without saying that SpaceX is going to fix this and attempt another one with its next landing.
Ascent phase & satellites look good, but booster rocket had a RUD on droneship
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2016