A SpaceX booster rocket, considered “historic” for completing a record 19 missions, ended its operational cycle after falling from a platform it was carrying and half of it was lost to the ocean floor, the space agency said.
As SpaceX confirmed in a release, it broke in two.
“This reusable booster rocket alone launched 2 astronauts and more than 860 satellites, totaling 260 metric tons, into orbit in approximately 3.5 years,” SpaceX highlighted on social media.
As the specialized media Spaceflight Now pointed out this Wednesday, this first stage, identified as B1058, landed eight minutes after the launch of 23 Starlink satellites, carrying SpaceX's broadband Internet network, on the ocean floor last Saturday. Located east of the Bahamas.
On Monday, the 41-meter-tall booster rocket fell due to strong weather while standing on the platform in the middle of a strong storm in the Atlantic towards Port Canaveral in central Florida.
“The new Falcon boosters are capable of improving the landing legs, self-leveling and mitigating this type of problem,” SpaceX explained in its filing.
Among the most notable missions this launch vehicle has been a part of is Demo-2, which carried former NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2020, making it the first U.S. mission to space. Soil in new years.
This was the first of eleven manned missions that carried 42 people into space on SpaceX's Dragon capsules. EFE
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