Booster Missed The Droneship And Impacted The Water

The space community watched as SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy for the first time on Tuesday. By nearly any measure, the launch was a great success. but while the company hoped to recover all three boosters from the test flight, they were only two-thirds successful in that regard.

Elon Musk confirmed Wednesday that the center core of the three booster configuration, which was supposed to land on the "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship in the Atlantic ocean, missed its target and underwent what Musk has called in the past a "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly" ... hitting the ocean at about 300 miles per hour and breaking up on impact.

During the live video shown during the launch, the SpaceX on-camera crew said that it was confirmed that the center core had returned to Earth, but did not say it had crashed into the ocean. The video feed from the drone ship was lost as the booster came down.

USA today reports that, according to SpaceX, two of the engines on the drone ship were damaged by debris from the booster, which missed the barge by only about the length of a football field.

SpaceX said that it had never intended to use the center core again. It had to be modified to withstand the stresses of having two additional boosters attached to it. The two outer boosters, which did return in what looked like a choreographed landing, were "flight-proven" but are not scheduled to fly again as they are an older version of the Falcon 9 booster.

Musk said that if the camera's on the drone ship didn't get "blown up" in the incident, he'll release the video from the landing as part of a "blooper reel".

(Image from file)

FMI: Original story