3.04.2018

One day after crashing into the ocean, one half of the nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket arrived in the Port of Los Angeles over the weekend.

The nose cone or fairing, which protects a rocket’s payload, carried 10 Iridium Communications satellites into orbit on Friday in a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

A crew boat named Mr. Steven was deployed to try and catch the fairing, but the nose cone crashed into the ocean at high-speed because its parafoil became twisted, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on Twitter.

This is only the second time in the eight years SpaceX has been launching the Falcon 9 rocket that a nose cone has arrived at the port on the ship.

Many assumed that meant it had broken into pieces, but the fairing half seen on Mr. Steven appeared to be intact.

While SpaceX has succeeded in landing rocket boosters so they can be refurbished and used again — bringing down costs — it is experimenting with recovering the $6 million fairings.

Mr. Steven’s four large clawed arms are designed to carry a giant net to hold one.

The ship arrived in the port in December and first tried to catch a fairing after a Paz satellite mission in February, but “missed by a few hundred meters,” Musk said. Mr. Steven was seen carrying the intact fairing into the Outer Harbor near 22nd and Miner Streets in San Pedro, where SpaceX docks ships used to bring in recovered boosters.

Musk has likened the ship to a catcher’s mitt. He told fans on Friday that SpaceX will “hopefully” release a video soon demonstrating what a successful catch would look like.

SpaceX is set to launch a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday to bring 5,800 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station.

Quelle:DAILY BREEZE