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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Crashes After Successful Launch

SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9, the company’s two-stage rocket designed to safely transport the Dragon spacecraft and satellites into orbit, and while the rocket crashed upon returning to the earth, on Saturday. The rocket successfully placed a Dragon cargo capsule in orbit, however, the attempt to land the rocket’s detached first-stage ended with a crash, or as billionaire founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said in an update on Twitter, the rocket made it, “but landed hard.”

The primary goal of the recent launch was to send more 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) of equipment, supplies, and experiments to the International Space Station aboard the Dragon, which is the part of the mission that “unfolded flawlessly,” NBC News reported. It was the 14-story-tall first-stage’s attempt to fly itself back to an “autonomous spaceport drone ship” located roughly 200 miles off Florida’s Atlantic coast that resulted in the hard landing the company’s founder tweeted about. While the unscrewed first stage experienced a “hard” landing, Musk conveyed his pride in his crew’s “huge strides towards reusability on this mission.”

Falcon 9 first made history in 2012 when it successfully rendezvoused with the International Space Station. This was the first time a commercial company, SpaceX, ever made a visit to the space station. The SpaceX website indicated that the company had “made a total of three flights to the space station” since their initial encounter back in 2012.

Falcon 9 made history in 2012 when it delivered Dragon into the correct orbit for rendezvous with the International Space Station, making SpaceX the first commercial company ever to visit the station. Since then SpaceX has made a total of three flights to the space station, both delivering and returning cargo for NASA.

NASA awarded $1.1 billion in support for three private space taxis and SpaceX, along with Boeing and Sierra Nevada, were the three companies selected to receive support, Space.com reported in 2012.

Are you excited for what SpaceX’s private-sector advances in space travel entail?

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