Currently, a fragment of American space history rests on the ocean floor. A SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster fell over and fractured in half on its return journey to Port Canaveral in Central Florida.
When this specific booster—tail number B1058—had its catastrophic crash, it was returning from an unprecedented 19th mission. On December 23, the rocket bearing 23 Starlink satellites took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in space. Eight and a half minutes after launch, the booster successfully landed on the drone ship “Just Read the Instructions,” which was positioned east of the Bahamas. In a social media statement, SpaceX said that it was overcome by “strong winds and waves.”
According to the business, “Upgraded landing legs on newer Falcon boosters can self-level and mitigate this kind of problem.
The Vice President of Launch for SpaceX, Kiko Deontchev, further explained in a different post that although they “mostly outfitted” the remaining Falcon booster fleet, B1058 was left in its original configuration due to its advanced age. The rocket “met its fate when it hit intense wind and waves resulting in failure of a partially secured [octo-grabber] less than 100 miles from home.”
“After experiencing a severe tippy booster two years ago on Christmas, we came up with self-leveling legs that immediately equalize leg loads on landing,” Deontchev wrote, alluding to the B1069 booster’s first flight.
“One thing is for sure, we will make lemonade out of lemons and learn as much as possible from historic 1058 on our path to aircraft-like operations,” he added.
United States tail (number)
In addition to having completed 19 flights and being the flight leader in SpaceX’s Falcon fleet, B1058 made history by being the first vehicle to launch humans from American soil since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.
On May 30, 2020, former NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken became the first people to board a SpaceX Crew Dragon rocket to travel to the International Space Station. The remarkable mission history of B1058, which lasted more than three years, began with that momentous mission, known as Demo-2.
The rocket, dubbed the “worm” and the “meatball,” was decorated with the official NASA emblems to commemorate its historic flight. With this mission, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program saw its first crewed flight and marked the start of a new era in which the agency would hire outside companies to transport humans to and from the orbiting outpost.
NASA and SpaceX found that the booster’s loss-of-crew (LOC) probability during the Demo-2 mission preparation exceeded the program’s necessary threshold of 1-in-270, coming in at 1-in-276.
Nineteen hours after taking off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Crew Dragon Endeavor docked with the International Space Station.
Although B1058 was only used on the Demo-2 flight, the rocket did assist one other voyage to the Space Station on December 6, 2020, when it launched a Cargo Dragon spacecraft, designated C208, as part of SpaceX’s 21st Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-21) mission.
The first and third Transporter flights of SpaceX, which launched a variety of CubeSats and NanoSats into orbit, as well as 14 satellite launches for SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation were among the other 17 flights of this launcher.
No longer present, but not forgotten
The last segment of B1058 arrived in Port Canaveral on Tuesday, December 26, aboard the ship “Just Read the Instructions.” Photographers, journalists, and bystanders gathered near the port entrance to have a peek at the remnants of the booster.
Three of the four landing legs protruded into the air, propped open as they were following the booster’s landing, and the majority of the rocket’s engine section seemed to be intact based on pictures.
Viewed from the summit of the remaining booster, cables were stretched out and scattered around the droneship’s edge, drawing in water as the craft returned to its pier.
Although B1058 will never take off again, SpaceX is determined to protect what is left and learn as much as they can.
“We are planning to salvage the engines and do life leader inspections on the remaining hardware,” said Jon Edwards, the Vice President of Launch Vehicles and Falcon 9 Product Director at SpaceX. “There is still quite a bit of value in this booster. We will not let it go to waste.”
Topics #NASA #ocean #SpaceX Falcon 9
