TOKYO: A charred, battered and debris-strewn landing barge emblazoned with the SpaceX logo returned to port in Jacksonville, Florida after a nearly successful attempt at catching a returning rocket.
The autonomous landing platform ship “Just Read the Instructions” made port late Thursday evening after SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster crashed on its surface on Tuesday. The first stage rocket, which had just helped lift SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule into low-Earth orbit to resupply the International Space Station, had been designed to make a controlled descent as part of an experimental rocket recovery system; while the 140-foot rocket hit the floating platform dead-on, an excess of lateral movement that was unable to be compensated for by its rocket engines caused the first stage booster to topple over, exploding spectacularly on the deck of the ship.
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and serves as its chief executive, says that the JRI only sustained minor damage from the last-second failure. The ship was towed back to Jacksonville waters by a marine tug early Thursday, but was only brought into dock after darkness had fallen and the tides turned advantageous for the large floating platform.
