SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 7:10 PM ET this evening and landed the booster on its drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean after takeoff.
However, SpaceX’s two boats, Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief didn’t catch the two fairing halves. The company says it will try to retrieve the fairing pieces from the water and use them on another launch, Space.com reports.
This is the first time that SpaceX has attempted to recover so many parts of its vehicle following a launch, catching them all before they hit the ocean.
While SpaceX has been fairly consistent with landing its rockets after each flight, the company has just started seeing some success with catching the rocket’s nose cone, also known as the payload fairing. But SpaceX has only had the capability to catch part of the fairing after each flight.
The fairing is the bulbous structure that sits on top of the rocket to protect the satellite payload during the ascent to space. Once the vehicle has made it past the bulk of Earth’s atmosphere, the fairing breaks into two pieces and falls back to Earth.
Typically, these pieces of the rocket go to waste — something that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was not happy about. “Imagine you had $6 million in cash in a pallet flying through the air, and it’s going to smash into the ocean,” Musk said once during a press conference. “Would you try to recover that? Yes. Yes, you would.”
In an effort to save these expensive pieces of hardware, SpaceX bought a boat and outfitted it with a giant net in order to catch one half of the fairing when it comes back to Earth.
At the same time, SpaceX outfitted each fairing half with its own tiny thrusters and guidance system to help them navigate through our planet’s atmosphere. They also have their own parachutes to slow their fall. When timed just right, the netted boat can swoop underneath the descending fairing and catch it before it hits the ocean.
For a handful of recent launches, SpaceX has been able to catch one of the fairing halves after takeoff — not both. But that’s mostly because the company only had one boat with a giant net. Now, SpaceX has two vessels — named Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief — which will work in tandem to catch both fairings.
Be the first to comment