Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a rocket loaded with cargo to the International Space Station before dawn Saturday morning, but failed to successfully land the craft's first-stage booster on a barge floating in the ocean.
"Rocket made it to the drone spaceport ship, but landed hard," tweeted Musk. "Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho."
The rocket blasted off at 1:47 a.m. Pacific time from Florida's Cape Canaveral.
Within minutes, the cargo-filled capsule separated from the first stage booster rocket. That was when the company attempted the unprecedented: flying the 13-story first stage back down to earth and landing it upright on an ocean barge.
The Hawthorne-based company hopes to one day be able to reuse the first stage, which includes the expensive and powerful engines needed to blast the capsule to orbit. The planned landing and recovery was part of Musk's goal of being able to refly the same spacecraft, greatly lowering the cost of space travel.
The SpaceX's Dragon capsule is loaded with more than 5,000 pounds of much-needed supplies for the space station. It is the first cargo mission since Oct. 28, when a supply ship that another company, Orbital Sciences, was operating for NASA exploded just seconds after leaving the launch pad.
"Dragon's health is excellent," said NASA's launch control about 30 minutes after liftoff. "Orbit is right on. … We have a very successful launch."
The capsule is expected to dock with the space station Monday. The flight will be the sixth time that SpaceX has reached the space station. It is the fifth trip covered by a $1.6-billion deal that the company has with NASA to shuttle cargo back and forth from orbit.
Musk tweeted that some of the barge's equipment was damaged by the landing. "Ship itself is fine," he wrote. "Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced."
"Didn't get good landing/impact video," he tweeted. "Pitch dark and foggy. Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces."
Reusable spacecraft have long been a dream of rocket scientists.
In a typical launch, the first stage falls back to earth after separating from the capsule and the second-stage booster that propels the capsule to orbit. The first stage is burned and damaged as it reenters the atmosphere, before landing in the ocean or remote land areas.
The space shuttle was designed to be reusable, but it was extraordinarily expensive to rebuild and refurbish once it was back on Earth.
To land the rocket, SpaceX engineers equipped it with foldable landing legs and fins to help control its descent.
The company towed a football-field-sized barge to a location some 200 miles off Florida's coast. The unmanned barge, called the "autonomous spaceport drone ship," was not anchored. Instead it has thrusters that keep it in place.
Before the launch, Musk said the company's chances of landing the rocket were no more than 50%. The company described the difficulty of the plan as "trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a windstorm."
The company has said it will try to land the first stage again on future launches.
On Monday night, Musk answered questions from the public on Reddit. Responding to a question about how he came up with the 50% figure, he wrote, "I pretty much made that up. I have no idea." He added a smiley face.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times2:38 a.m.: This story was updated with new information throughout.
2:27 a.m.: This story was updated with the booster's landing.
This story was first posted at 2:17 a.m.
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