Before the landing at the Falcon 9 rocket ran out of liquid oxygen

In 2016, the percentage of successful landings is planned at 70%, recalls Ilon Musk

Ilon Musk today gave the latest information on the investigation of the incident with a hard landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9. A video from the support ship was published.

Stabilized video, the same fragment:



As you can see, the landing was quite accurate, but one of the engines turned off at the very last moment.

Ilon Musk says that the lack of liquid oxygen has become a likely cause of engine shutdown. Engineers did not calculate the smallest, and the fuel ran out just a few seconds before landing.



Due to the engine shutdown, the landing was hard enough - this was enough to “ destroy the primary hull and crush the engines ” (“destroy the primary airframe and accordion the engines”). Obviously, the remaining fragments are carefully analyzed in order to investigate the causes of the accident in more detail.

This first stage of the Falcon 9 is not recoverable and will not be used to restart.

Ilon Musk reminded that they warned at the beginning of the year : in 2016, the estimated level of successful landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 will be about 70%, so everything goes according to plan: “2016 is the year of experiments,” says Musk.



Before an unsuccessful landing, the Falcon 9 launch vehicle successfully put the EUTELSAT 117 West B and ABS-2A satellites into orbit. Falcon 9 start took place on June 15 at 17:29 (Moscow time). Nine minutes after the start, the first step returned to the platform, but it was not possible to save it.

The unsuccessful landing of the first stage was filmed on video from an automated barge, but the broadcast was interrupted right at the time of landing (26:30).



SpaceX continues to experiment. To date, the company managed to land the first stage once on the spaceport and land it three times on the floating platform "Of course, I still love you." In general, by the end of the year, the percentage of successful landings can reach the projected 70%.