A cargo ship carrying food, experiments and supplies, including an Italian espresso maker, to the International Space Station, lifted off Tuesday afternoon from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
However, an attempt by of Hawthorne, Calif., better known as SpaceX, to land the booster stage of the rocket on a floating platform fell short again. About 20 minutes after the launching, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, delivered the mixed news via Twitter.
Ascent successful. Dragon enroute to Space Station. Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
The booster, or first stage, has nine engines and lifted the rocket from the launching pad through the first 2 minutes and 40 seconds of flight. Riding on top of the Falcon 9 was a capsule carrying about two tons of cargo.
With its fuel mostly expended, the first-stage then detached and fell away. The single engine on the second stage of the Falcon 9 ignited, and the cargo capsule continued its upward arc to orbit.
The first stage then performed a series of acrobatic maneuvers: flipping 180 degrees and reigniting its engines for half a minute as the onboard computer aimed it toward the 300-foot-by-170-foot platform, which SpaceX has playfully named “Just Read the Instructions.”
Two earlier landing attempts this year were encouraging failures. In January, the stage made it to the platform, but ran out of hydraulic fluid to move the grid fins, and .
SpaceX added hydraulic fluid to the rocket, but could not deploy the landing platform known as the “drone ship” because of 25-foot-high waves. The rocket stage still went through the motions of landing, but without the platform, it toppled over into the ocean.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk did not provide details of why the landing was “too hard for survival” as he posted.
Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
The cargo capsule will arrive at the space station Friday morning. The cargo includes 1,100 pounds of food and supplies for the crew, 1,140 pounds of hardware, and 1,860 pounds of science experiments.
One experiment will examine how water shifts in astronauts’ bodies in the absence of gravity. The increase of pressure within their skulls could be what causes eyeballs to .
Mice are also on their way to the International Space Station to participate in a study tracking how much bone and muscle is lost in space. Scientists hope to gain knowledge that could be used for eventual long-duration space missions.
Miss today's launch? Want to see it again? Watch now. set to arrive at Fri.
— NASA (@NASA)