Falcon 9 First Stage – Second Landing Attempt

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about SpaceX’s second attempt of landing the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket on a barge.

After a one day weather delay, SpaceX launched a Dragon spacecraft on top of a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit on Tuesday. The Dragon cargo craft itself is loaded with 2.2 tons of supplies and experiments heading for the International Space Station. About 9 minutes after liftoff, the Dragon was deployed into a stable orbit around the Earth and unfurled its solar arrays.

While the Dragon cargo craft was deployed into its initial orbit, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket was descending back to Earth. Normally, the first stage of a rocket is used only once, falls back to Earth after it is burned out and plunges into an ocean. However, SpaceX works on a concept to reuse the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket to reduce the launch costs. SpaceX’s final goal is to return the first stage back to a safe landing area next to the launch pad after the stage has completed its job.

Currently, SpaceX evaluates the rocket’s descent system and tries to land the booster on a stationary platform in the Atlantic Ocean. For this purpose, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket was equipped with four landing struts, variable thrust engines and aerodynamic girder fins in order to control the descent back to Earth.

Tuesday’s launch marked the second time SpaceX has tried to land a Falcon 9 first stage on a barge. The first attempt to land the booster after a launch on January 10th worked nearly perfect until the aerodynamic girder fins ran out of hydraulic fluid just before the landing and, as a result of this, the first stage crashed on the barge.

This second attempt was almost successful and the first stage managed to land on the platform. However, the first stage had some lateral momentum at the moment of the landing. Although the thrusters tried to stabilize the rocket after touch down, the horizontal momentum was too strong and the booster flipped over resulting in an explosion.

SpaceX came one step closer to their goal of making the launcher’s first stage reusable.