NEW YORK : Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture fell short in a first-ever attempt to recapture a rocket for reuse, with a booster’s hard landing on a ship deck coming close enough that the billionaire declared it “bodes well for the future.
“Close, but no cigar this time,” Mr Musk said .
SpaceX sought to guide the Falcon 9 rocket to a soft, vertical touchdown atop an unmanned recovery vessel about the size of a soccer pitch, after lofting a load of supplies toward the International Space Station.
The craft “made it to the drone spaceport ship, but landed hard”, damaging some support equipment on the vessel that will have to be replaced, Mr Musk, who is also chairman of Tesla Motors, said.
SpaceX’s technology uses propulsion and sophisticated navigation to help recapture components that previously burned up in Earth’s atmosphere or were abandoned to the ocean floor.
He has said developing reusable craft could cut space flight expense by a factor of 100, a saving needed to help achieve his goal of colonising Mars.
The booster’s near-miss after travelling from an altitude of more than 80km shows the advances may be within reach.
The rocket in Saturday’s launch carried a Dragon capsule hauling food and equipment under a $1.6bn contract for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).
Propelled into orbit by the rocket, the 2,360kg of supplies are now heading toward a rendezvous with the space station which is expected today.
SpaceX had postponed the resupply mission three times over the past month. It is the first cargo flight to the orbiting lab since a fiery blast destroyed an Antares rocket operated by Orbital Sciences in October last year, a setback for Nasa’s use of contractors to ferry supplies.
Nasa relies on Orbital and SpaceX to ship supplies to the lab after ending the shuttle programme in 2011.
“We are delighted to kick off 2015 with our first commercial cargo launch of the year,” Nasa’s administrator Charles Bolden said.
“Thanks to our private sector partners, we’ve returned space station resupply launches to US soil and are poised to do the same with the transport of our astronauts in the very near future.
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