Piece of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket found in Washington field

Failure ofThe launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage into orbit late last month produced a spectacular light show over the Pacific Northwest, but the incident resulted in a large part of the rocket crashing into a farmer’s field.

The second stage was supposed to burn on the Pacific Ocean, away from populated areas, but a failure of the desorbitation burn resulted in an uncontrolled re-entry on March 26, 2021.

Dramatic videos taken from the ground showed chunks of glowing debris crossing the sky around 9:00 p.m. local time as the rocket’s top component burned and disintegrated on the west coast of the United States.

The deorbitation failure occurred about three weeks after the rocket launched, during which a Falcon 9 successfully dropped 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage managed to land on a drone shortly after launching from Kennedy Space Center on March 4.

SpaceX has been eerily silent on all of this. The Tri-City Herald now reports this a charred lump from the second stage crashed into a farmer’s field in Washington state. the the residue appears to be an overwrapped composite pressure vessel, or COPV, which is designed to carry fluids, such as super cold helium, under pressure.

Kyle Foreman of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office told the Tri-City Herald that the tank left a 4 inch bump in the ground. SpaceX, after being contacted by deputies from the sheriff’s office, arrived on the scene to pick up its trash.

“SpaceX recovered an overpacked composite pressure vessel when the Falcon 9 re-entered last week.” tweeted the Grant County Sheriff. “It was found on private property in southwest Grant County this week. Media and Treasure Hunters: We are not disclosing details. “

To which the sheriff’s office added, “The owner just wants to be left alone.”

As for what went wrong during the deorbitation, “there was not enough thruster after this launch to ignite the Merlin engine and complete the combustion”, so the “thruster was evacuated into space”, resulting in “uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere.” , “ Eric Berger reported at Ars Technica.

A similar event occurred in 2014, when an apparent COPV of a Falcon 9 landed in Brazil. It is fortunate that no one was ever injured in these incidents, which fortunately are rare. To date, SpaceX has completed 111 Falcon 9 launches, including 71 first stage landings and 54 missions involving reflown rockets.