A historic first attempt to land a reusable rocket on a floating barge – in what would have been a major leap forward in slashing the cost of space travel – has failed.
The 2-stage Falcon 9 rocket was launch by private space company SpaceX from Cape Canaveral Air Force position in Florida at 4.47am EST (9.47am GMT) following a previous attempt on Tuesday was aborted a minute before take-off since of technical problems.
An unmanned Dragon spacecraft packed with more than 2 tons of food and gear for the International Space Station is expected to arrive at the station on Monday. The ship was confirmed to be en route to the ISS nine minutes after take-off. But it was the revival of the first stage that was the all-important element of the work. SpaceX wanted to ground the rocket on a barge out at sea, 200 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida.
The ability to land a rocket’s first stage intact in its place of allowing it to burn up in the atmosphere will slash the cost of space missions, making them additional attractive to private operators such as SpaceX.
But the historic landing attempt unsuccessful. Around 20 minutes after take-off, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX tweeted: “Rocket ended it to drone spaceport-ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodeswell for the future tho.
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