As many in the tech industry are aware, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket landing test did not go as planned.
To put it in the words of the company’s CEO, Elon Musk: it was “close, but no cigar.”
The failure didn’t come as much of a surprise to many—the ability to land a space rocket upon a floating barge involved an incredibly amount of math, technology, engineering, physics, and more; even Musk himself gave the landing a 50/50 shot at succeeding.
For the first time since the incident happened, photos have been released of the crash as it occurred, detailing what appears to have gone wrong.
The images were shared in a series of tweets that Musk sent over to fellow rocket enthusiast and Oculus VR evangelist John Carmack, after Musk said that the frames were “kinda begging to be released”.
The problems for the 14-story-tall ship started when the rocket section’s fins lost power and went hardover. The result was a terrific amount of push that the engine couldn’t counter; this led to the rocket heading into the floating barge at a 45-degree angle. When this happened, its residual fuel and oxygen combined, resulting in the fiery explosion.
Regardless of the fin failure, it was remarkably impressive to see that the SpaceX team came so close to getting the rocket to land on a relatively tiny barge after minutes ago flying some 50 miles into space.
Fortunately for the company, there was little damage to the barge and both Musk and the SpaceX team remain optimistic about being able to make this technology work. In fact, the CEO just recently tweeted out the following message:
Stay tuned!
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