Last SpaceX mission partially successful

6/16/2016, Milan Šurkala

The SpaceX's flight on this Wednesday was only partially successful. The rocket was able to bring the satellites to orbit but there is still a need for an improvement of landing the rocket. This attempt did not end well.

This Wednesday, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket should have delivered two satellites to orbit and return back to Earth. The first stage went successful. The rocket was able to launch from Cape Canaveral at 10:29AM and two commercial satellites Eutelstat 117 West B and ABS-2A were deployed to orbit (Geosynchronous Transfer Orbits - GTO).

On the other hand, the landing have not made Elon Musk happy. Even though there were several successful landings in the past, this one was not. One of the three landing engines probably provided low thrust and the rocket crashed on the droneship. This situation is called RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly). The droneship itself is OK but the vehicle is lost. Nevertheless, SpaceX is at least grateful for the data that were received during this attempt. The next flight of SpaceX is scheduled for July 1. Let us hope it will be more successful this time.

Source: bizjournals.com, spacex.com