SpaceX misses its rocket landing on a drone ship... again
SpaceX didn't quite stick the landing Friday.
After launching a communications satellite toward orbit for SES at 6:35 p.m. ET, Elon Musk's space outfit attempted to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth on a drone ship floating out in the Atlantic Ocean.
It wasn't successful.
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But the attempt was a real rollercoaster. Viewers of the SpaceX livestream on Friday saw what appeared to be the rocket coming in for a landing, in real time, before the video feed cut.
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Those watching at SpaceX HQ yelled, sighed in unison and applauded the attempt.
Others delightfully teased those who complained on Twitter about the feed.
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A host explained that tends to happen because of the sheer force of the rocket attempting to make the landing shaking the cameras.
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Regardless of the stream, SpaceX wasn't exactly expecting the landing to work this time around anyway.
The spaceflight company even said that a "successful landing is not expected" for this attempt in a press kit released ahead of launch.
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The company wasn't exactly confident ahead of the landing because of the orbit they needed to place the SES satellite into. Reaching a high orbit required using a lot of fuel, leaving little for the landing itself.
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SpaceX has not been successful with drone ship landings in the past.
This was the fourth time the company has tried (and failed) to land on the barge at sea; however, SpaceX did manage to land back on a pad on solid land at Cape Canaveral in December after launching 11 satellites to orbit.
These landings are more than just gimmicks for SpaceX and other companies aiming for space.
SpaceX wants to eventually reuse rocket stages brought back from space after launching missions to greatly reduce the cost of sending people, payloads and cargo to orbit. By using boosters for multiple missions, it could slash the cost of spaceflight by multiple factors of 10, Musk has said.
Other companies like Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are also hoping to create reusable fleets of rockets.
Blue Origin has started test flights of its fully reusable suborbital New Shepard system, even landing and then re-launching a booster that had been to space.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
