SpaceX misses booster landing
B1062's demise.
For the first time in 3 years, SpaceX has missed a booster landing, resulting in the destuction of said booster. This marks the end of a streak of 267 booster reuses, and multiple booster reuse records.
The Starlink 8-6 mission was slated to be a routine mission to deploy Starlink satellites, and the satellites were deployed in the intended orbit. All was well, but the second part of the mission- the booster landing- didn’t fare as well. Booster 1082 made its landing burn, and landed itself perfectly dead-center on the middle of the droneship- but not all was well. We saw the Merlin engines flaming, then one of its landing struts buckled, and the next thing we knew, B1062 was no more.
This marks the demise of the most storied booster in the SpaceX fleet. Booster 1062 serviced 23 missions, from Crew Dragon missions to Starlink. Below is a list of all the missions this historic booster serviced:
1. GPS-3 4
2. GPS-3 5
3. Inspiration4
4. Starlink 4-5
5. Axiom Mission 1
6. Starlink 4-16
7. Nilesat-301
8. Starlink 4-25
9. Starlink 4-27
10. Starlink 4-36
11. Starlink 5-1
12. Starlink 5-4
13. OneWeb #17
14. Arabsat BADR-8
15. Starlink 6-7
16. Starlink 6-23
17. Starlink 6-30
18. Starlink 6-38
19. Starlink 6-44
20. Starlink 6-49
21. Starlink 6-59
22. Starlink 10-3
23. Starlink 8-6
All in all, this historic booster ferried 8 astronauts to space and launched 16 Starlink missions. The mantle of the fleet leader has passed down to Booster 1061, with 22 launches and landings.
This comes after B1058, a similar booster, toppled over on the droneship after landing due to choppy seas and high winds. Elon Musk has said that future boosters to come off the production line will have strengthened landing legs to prevent similar events from happening. This will not affect the Polaris Dawn mission, slated to take place within the next week. To see live coverage of that mission, go to theweeklyspaceman.com/articles/polarisdawnlive .
EDIT: The FAA has announced that an investigation will be required. Until such an investigation is completed, Falcon 9 will be grounded. It is yet unclear how this will affect Polaris Dawn and other missions.
