The bankruptcy oforbiting a second stage of SpaceX Falcon 9 late last month produced a spectacular light show in the Pacific Northwest, but the incident caused much of the rocket to crash into a farmer’s field.
The second stage was supposed to burn over the Pacific Oceancean, away from populated areas, but a failure in exorbitation on March 26, 2021 there was an uncontrolled re-entry.
Dramatic videos extracted from the ground showed pieces of shiny debris scraping through the sky around 9 p.m. local time as the top component of the rocket burned and disintegrated off the west coast of the United States.
The failed orbit occurred about three weeks after the rocket launched, in which a Falcon 9 successfully deposited 60 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. The first stage managed to land on a drone ship shortly after launch from the Kennedy Space Center on March 4.
G / O Media may receive a commission
SpaceX has been strangely silent about all of this. Tsee Tri-City Herald reports that a second-stage charred piece crashed into the field of a Washington state farmer. He the remainder appears to be a pressure vessel composed of overwrap or COPV, which is designed to transport fluids, such as super-cold helium, under pressure.
Kyle Foreman of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office he told the Tri-City Herald the tank left a 4-inch tooth on the ground. SpaceX, after being contacted by deputies from the sheriff’s office, arrived at the scene to pick up the trash.
“SpaceX recovered a pressure vessel wrapped in compound from last week’s re-entry of Falcon 9,” he tweeted the sheriff of Grant county. “This week it has been found on private properties in southwest Grant County. Media and treasure hunters: we do not divulge details ”.
To which the sheriff’s office added, “The property owner simply wants to be left alone.”
As for what failed during desorbit, “there was not enough propellant after this launch to start the Merlin engine and complete combustion,” so the “propellant was vented into space.” , which caused the “uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere” Eric Berger reported and Ars Technica.
A similar event occurred in 2014, when an apparent COPV of a Falcon 9 landed in Brazil. It is fortunate that no one has ever been injured in these incidents, which fortunately they are rar. So far, SpaceX has completed 111 launches of the Falcon 9, including 71 first-stage landings and 54 rocket-launched missions.