TORONTO – Once again, it was close.
For the third time, SpaceX tried to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship. Though the rocket reached the ship — which in itself is pretty impressive considering it has to find a target 91 metres by 30 metres from space — it failed to stay upright.
READ MORE: WATCH: SpaceX releases video of barge landing attempt
The rocket launched from NASA’s Cape Canaveral in Florida, and headed to resupply astronauts on board the International Space Station with supplies and scientific experiments.
In order to safely land, the Falcon 9 needs to slow down from 1,300 metres per second to 250 metres per second and eventually to just two metres per second.
And it seems that with this attempt, it was the speed that got it. SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted shortly after the landing.
So that “excess lateral velocity” is fancy talk for “came down too fast and tipped.”
In the first attempt to land the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket after launching to the International Space Station, the rocket ran out of hydraulic fuel and crashed into the ship.
Due to rough seas, SpaceX didn’t send the drone ship out to sea, but rather had the rocket land where it was supposed to be.
Musk, in his typical fashion, took Tuesday’s landing failure in stride.
Hopefully, he won’t ask us to call him Dr. Evil.
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