Due to rough weather at sea, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster, which made a record 19 successful landings, tipped over on its way back to Florida.
SpaceX made its maiden flight late Monday on its historic 2020 Demo 2 mission, which took NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into space and still features NASA’s “worm” on its side. It was announced that the booster displaying the logo had successfully completed its final flight. .
“During transit back to port early this morning, high winds and waves caused the booster to topple over on the droneship. The new Falcon booster has upgraded landing legs with self-leveling capabilities and features to alleviate this type of issue. ” SpaceX posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Images on social media show only the lower portion of the 135-foot-tall fuselage remaining aboard the Just Read the Instructions drone ship, which entered Port Canaveral Tuesday morning, with the booster on one side. He was seen falling down.
“We plan to recover the engine and conduct a life-reader inspection of the remaining hardware,” said John Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon rockets. “This booster still has significant value. We won’t let it go to waste.”
The booster’s final flight took place early Saturday morning, launching 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites before making its final landing on a droneship.
The Crew Demo 2 flight on May 30, 2020, was the first human return to flight from the Space Coast since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. This paved the way for SpaceX’s regular commercial crews and the civilian missions they would have to complete. The date when 42 people were sent into space on 11 missions.
This historic flight allowed NASA to not only use the usual “meatball” logo of a blue sphere with a red chevron stuck through it, but also to use the logo first seen in 1975 and discontinued for use on spacecraft in 1992. It also brought back NASA’s “worm” logo.
This booster went on to fly ANASIS-11, CRS-21, Transporter 1, Transporter 3, and 14 Starlink missions.
“This single reusable rocket booster alone has launched two astronauts and more than 860 satellites (totaling more than 260 tons) into orbit in about three and a half years,” SpaceX told X Posted.
SpaceX first successfully recovered a booster about eight years ago and has since made 256 successful landings with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Of the boosters that attempted recovery landings, not one has been lost since February 2021.
SpaceX’s reuse efforts have allowed it to approach 100 launches a year at its facilities in Florida and California. On the Space Coast alone, SpaceX has managed 66 of the 70 launches, with at least one more scheduled before the new year.
One of the aircraft is the Falcon scheduled to lift off from KSC’s launch pad 39-A on the Space Force’s USSF-52 mission carrying the secret X-37B spacecraft during a four-hour window Thursday from 7 to 11 p.m.・Heavy. It is expected to be a multi-year orbital mission.
Two of the three boosters for this launch will attempt a recovery landing in Canaveral’s Landing Zones 1 and 2, thereby allowing the double to be heard over much of the Space Coast and other areas of Central Florida. brings about a sonic boom.
_____