Yesterday, SpaceX made its second attempt to land a first-stage CRS rocket on a barge, in order to deem it reusable. Footage of the attempt was scarce at the time, but today SpaceX has given us a better look at exactly how things went down:
The resulting explosion is a sadly glorious sight, but even more amazing is the fact that SpaceX managed to hit a moving barge with a 200-foot rocket that was flying backwards. While this particular rocket will not be reusable (because, as you saw, it exploded), the results have the company very hopeful for the future.
Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing pic.twitter.com/eJWzN6KSJa
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2015
Ascent successful. Dragon enroute to Space Station. Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2015
https://twitter.com/jasonkimosabe/status/588076842009112578
As far as hitting targets that aren’t small moving barges in the ocean, SpaceX has been pretty good at that for almost a year now.
Screengrab via SpaceX/YouTube
