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SpaceX gave his cone-catch-cone boat, Mr. Steven, a much larger net.
Credit: SpaceX via Twitter
Mr. Steven now has a bigger margin of error.
SpaceX equipped the fast boat with a much larger net, to give it a better chance of picking payload fairings – the nose cones that protect the spacecraft during launch – from the skies. "Steven – now with sharper, SpaceX's refit recovery craft was outfitted with a 4x larger net before its next scheduled recovery attempt later this month," SpaceX representatives wrote on Friday. (July 13) before and after photos of the boat 205 feet (62 meters).
Steven is part of SpaceX's effort to develop rockets and spaceships that are fully and quickly reusable. Such technology could reduce the cost of spaceflight enough to make bold projects like the colonization of Mars economically feasible, said SpaceX's founder and CEO Elon Musk
SpaceX landed regularly and relaunched the first stages of its Falcon 9 rocket. two floors. The peeling of fairings Falcon 9 also makes a lot of sense economically; they cost about $ 6 million each, said Musk. And tearing them out of the air, before they hit the highly corrosive seawater, is the key.
Each Falcon 9 fairing consists of two parts, both of which return to Earth in parachute (actually, parafoil) shortly after takeoff. The fairing halves are also equipped with small thrusters and can therefore point to the desired splash points.
Steven has been trying to hang a half fairing three times, in February, March and May of this year. At the first and third trials, it was close but no cigar: Mr. Steven arrived a few hundred meters in February and missed about fifty meters in May, said representatives of SpaceX. During the March attempt, the parafoil of the target twisted and the fairing piece struck hard against the ocean
On July 25, the Falcon 9 lofts 10 satellites of the Iridium communications company Vandenberg Air. Force Base in California, according to media reports.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom Facebook or Google+ . Originally published on Space.com .
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