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2nd LD: SpaceX launches cargo mission, but rocket recovery test fails again

Xinhua, April 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

SpaceX, a private U.S. firm, on Tuesday afternoon launched its sixth cargo mission to the International Space Station but failed in another attempt to land the spent first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

The California-based company's Dragon cargo ship, filled with more than 4,300 pounds (1,950 kg) of supplies and payloads, lifted off at 4:10 p.m. EDT (2010 GMT) aboard the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in the state of Florida.

But the world may be more interested in the so-called precision- landing of the Falcon 9's first stage, which was conducted after its separation from the second stage as part of a reusable-rocket test. The first stage, however, has a hard landing again.

"Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted. "Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing."

SpaceX first tried the rocket landing on the company's autonomous spaceport drone ship, now named Just Read the Instructions, in January, but the attempt ended in a crash on the boat because the rocket's steering fins ran out of hydraulic fluid.

The company intended to go for it again in February, during the launch of a satellite called Deep Space Climate Observatory, but high waves scrubbed the attempt.

At a prelaunch press conference Sunday, SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann put the chances of success this time at 75 percent or 80 percent, but his boss, Musk, said Monday the odds were still less than 50 percent. Endite