US fails again in landing satellite on drone ship


Washington, March 5 (IANS): US space firm SpaceX successfully sent a European commercial communications satellite into space but failed to land it on a drone ship, media reports said on Saturday.

The space firm failed in an attempt to softland the spent first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported.

SpaceX achieved one successful soft landing in December last year on a land-based pad at Cape Canaveral, but its three previous attempts to land the first stage on an ocean drone ship - in January 2015, April 2015, and January 2016 - all failed.

About one hour after launch, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted: "Rocket landed hard on the droneship. Didn't expect this one to work ... but next flight has a good chance."

The failure was not a surprise as SpaceX itself had little hope for the rocket recovery test, part of the company's efforts to produce a fully reusable rocket.

SpaceX said a reusable rocket would dramatically reduce the cost of space transport. 

Traditionally, rockets are designed for a single use only, burning up or crashing into the ocean after lift off.

The Falcon 9 rocket shot into the sky from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in the US state of Florida, carrying a commercial communications satellite called SES-9, which would deliver television and high-speed broadband services to the Asia-Pacific region.

The rocket's first stage separated about 2.5 minutes after launch and then performed a series of engine burns for an experimental landing on the "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.

This time, the SES-9 was headed for the Geostationary Transfer Orbit, about 36,000 kilometres above the Earth, which required the rocket to fly faster than usual.

This made it more difficult for a landing after stage separation. SpaceX said in a pre-launch statement that "a successful landing is not expected". 

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: US fails again in landing satellite on drone ship



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.