SpaceX Official Says Failed Landing of Falcon 9 Was Due to Heat Damage Written 24 February 2021
Falcon 9 first stage on an ASDS barge after successful landing at sea. | Credit: SpaceX; Wikipedia; CC0
Space News reports that a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster “failed to land after its most recent launch Feb. 15 because of ‘heat damage’ it sustained.” During the 47th Spaceport Summit on Tuesday, SpaceX senior adviser for build and flight reliability Hans Koenigsmann “said the failed landing during an otherwise successful launch of Starlink satellites remains under investigation.” On Friday, NASA International Space Station program manager Joel Montalbano “said the agency was in discussions with SpaceX about that investigation to see if it involved any issues that could affect the Crew-2 commercial crew launch scheduled for April 20.” Montalbano said, “As of today, we’re working with them to better understand what happened, and right now it’s just too early to say if we’re going to have any impacts” on the Crew-2 launch.
Full Story (Space News)