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SpaceX successfully landed the center of its Falcon Heavy rocket on a drone ship last week, but accidentally fell into the ocean while in transit to the Florida coast. The company blamed the loss on choppy seas.
"SpaceX's recovery team was unable to secure the center core booster for its return trip to Port Canaveral," SpaceX said in a statement The Verge. "As conditions welsened with eight to ten foot swells, the booster was unable to remain upright. While we had hoped to bring back the booster back, the safety of our team always takes precedence. We do not expect future missions to be impacted. "
The center core is a modified Falcon 9 booster – one of three make up the Falcon Heavy rocket. This particular core flew on Thursday, April 11th, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, during the second flight of the Falcon Heavy. The flight marked the first time the rocket had flown in a year since its debut in February 2018, as well as the first commercial mission for the vehicle.
Following takeoff, all three cores of the rocket successfully landed back on Earth: the two outer cores touched down on the front of the body. . It was the first time that SpaceX had pulled off a triple landing. During the Falcon Heavy's first flight, the outer cores landed just fine, but the center core missed the drone ship entirely and slammed into the ocean.
Now it seems that the ocean once again got the better of the Falcon Heavy center core. SpaceX is one of the world's most popular rocket launches, including a robot known as "octagrabber". But because the center connects to two side boosters, it has a different design than a normal Falcon 9 booster. So the octagrabber can not hold on the same way.
SpaceX has another Falcon Heavy mission coming up sometime this summer in Florida, one of the last ones. SpaceX does not work for the mission. Maybe the company has gotten to the core of the world, or maybe it's more conducive to transporting rockets.
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