CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket Saturday morning with a capsule of supplies and equipment for the International Space Station but failed in its attempt to bring the used rocket back down in one piece.
The spacecraft’s Dragon capsule reached orbit on its way to a Monday rendezvous with the station. It was the private company’s 14th consecutive flawless launch of the Falcon 9 rocket.
This time, however, SpaceX tried something new: an effort to control the booster’s return and land it gently on an ocean barge, a step toward the company’s goal of making its rockets reusable and launches much cheaper
The difficult maneuver didn’t entirely work.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a hard landing broke the rocket into pieces. He later wrote that the rocket ran out of hydraulic fluid used to control the descent and landing apparatus.
Even so, all went well with the day’s primary mission of SpaceX carrying needed cargo toward the space station.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched smoothly at 4:47 a.m. EST Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. At its apex, the Dragon capsule carried a new global-weather monitoring device and more than two tons of supplies and equipment for the six international astronauts living aboard the station 260 miles above the Earth.
The key piece of equipment is a 1,000-pound device called the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, a laser remote-sensing machine that astronauts will attach to the outside of the station. It will measure and characterize the worldwide distribution of clouds, haze, dust, air pollutants and smoke.
That should help scientists determine how the clouds and atmospheric aerosols affect weather, climate, airplane safety and human health.
The Dragon is set to arrive at the space station at 6:12 a.m. EST Monday.
This is the fifth resupply mission for SpaceX under a 12-mission, cargo-hauling contract with NASA.
Less than three minutes after Saturday’s launch, the first stage dropped off while the Dragon and the rocket’s second stage continued on at 10 times the speed of sound.
At that point, SpaceX re-ignited the first stage’s engines to direct a controlled descent, and bring it down targeting an unoccupied drone barge in the ocean. The rocket stage also has retractable legs that opened, and newly added grid fins to help stabilize it.
With a final engine burn, the company had wanted to land it softly. It hit the target but apparently not gently.
Musk wrote that the barge itself was fine though some support equipment onboard was not. There were no human observers within miles of it, and the landing video apparently was not clear.
The operation was only a test. SpaceX said beforehand that it had only about a 50 percent chance of succeeding. But it is a critical step in the company’s long-term plan to make its rockets reusable, to reduce launch costs.
