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SpaceX makes a hard landing in second attempt at reusing rocket

Well, it landed.

 

Taylor Hatmaker

Tech

Posted on Apr 14, 2015   Updated on May 29, 2021, 2:03 am CDT

Today in its second attempt to forge ahead into a crazy-like-a-fox future of space flight, SpaceX attempted to land a first-stage rocket back on Earth after sending it heavenward. While SpaceX succeeded in hitting its target—a floating drone barge off the coast of Florida, the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket again landed hard enough to render it unusable the next time around.

The first report out of the launch bubbled up on Twitter, painting a vivid mental image of how that whole hitting a literal moving target with a 200-foot-tall rocket thing went down.

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While no footage of the rocket’s crash-ish landing had made it online yet, SpaceX appears to have avoided the issues that plagued the rocket’s fins and fine-tuned positioning the first time around, resulting in a not-yet-soft but more upright—and perhaps less Vine-worthy—landing.

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft appears to be doing just fine on its critical mission to caffeinate the International Space Station

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to provide additional clarity and context.

Photo via SpaceX

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*First Published: Apr 14, 2015, 6:12 pm CDT