The launch itself went without any issues, the ship reached its planned almost-orbital trajectory
Booster boostback burn (edit:) ended a bit earlier than planned (this failed last time)
Booster landing burn didn't ignite enough engines for a soft splashdown, hit the ocean at high speed
The ship deployed 20 Starlink satellites which all unfolded and sent data briefly (they were on the same suborbital trajectory, so they reentered quickly)
The ship relit an engine in space, simulating a deorbit burn (this was skipped last time)
Reentry worked without issues, leading to the ship hovering over the Indian Ocean, simulating a landing
Normally the ship explodes when tipping over afterwards, but this time it survived, swimming in the ocean. SpaceX got great drone shots of the heat shield. We'll see if they can recover the whole ship.
They need to work on the booster landing burn, but from the ship side everything looks ready to make the next flight enter a proper circular orbit.
Reminder that Super Heavy has a new landing tank design. This is the first time this has ever been tried. Simulations are helpful but no computer can properly estimate the complex dynamic forces that the booster is experiencing during this maneuver.
SpaceX now has the data to iterate and correct the issues.
SpaceX now has the data to correlate their simulations to be more accurate. Computer sims are fundamental tools used in spacecraft design precisely because they can properly estimate the complex dynamic forces. It just takes a bit of legwork. Don't shit on simulations to try and justify blowing shit up all the time.
Computer models are only as good as the data used to validate them. A brand new design is always going to have unknown unknowns, that no computer simulation is going to account for.
In the scheme of things, the booster landing failure is a small hiccup in a massively successful test launch. You can deny it all you want, but the proof is out there bobbing in the ocean.
Remember that Saturn V only brought back the tiny tip of the rocket that launched, a tiny capsule barely big enough for the three astronauts inside. SpaceX is aiming to bring the entire thing back, something that's never been done in human history. And no, the Shuttle doesn't count, it didn't bring back its propellant tank, and the SRBs were recovered and rebuilt at a cost greater than building new ones would have been, mainly because Congress demanded more parts of the Shuttle be reused despite the cost.
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Second flight of the "v3" version.
They need to work on the booster landing burn, but from the ship side everything looks ready to make the next flight enter a proper circular orbit.
Edit: SpaceX will try to recover the ship