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SpaceX Drone Ship Damaged After Falcon 9 Landing

By Doug Messier
Parabolic Arc
October 24, 2017
Filed under ,

SpaceX first stage recovery drone ship. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX’s drone ship named “Of Course I Still Love You” was damaged during the landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 that launched the SES-11 satellite earlier this month.

The exact series of events is unclear, but it is understood the booster leaked some of its residue RP-1 fuel, which flowed along the deck of the ASDS and pooled near the containers at the aft of the drone ship.

The booster then continued post-landing operations, designed to safe the booster ahead of crews boarding the ship to complete the safing process ahead of the trip back to port.

At some point shortly after landing there was an ignition of the pooled RP-1, likely via the purging of the Triethylaluminum-Triethylborane (TEA-TEB) that is used as the first stage ignitor. This has to be purged as part of the safing procedures for allowing crew near the rocket.

Fire hoses – staged on the deck of the ship – quickly doused the fire. However, the garage containing the robot – nicknamed “Roomba” or “OctaGrabber” (among other names) – was caught in the fire and damaged.

This was confirmed by the lack of the robot in view under the rocket during the ASDS’ return to Port.

13 responses to “SpaceX Drone Ship Damaged After Falcon 9 Landing”

  1. Wayne Martin says:
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    Not much out there other than some long distance photos although I did find these and they seem pretty good…

    https://imgur.com/a/RJyXe#s

  2. Wayne Martin says:
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    You’re most welcome and it gives you a good idea where the RP-1 pooled …

  3. Robert G. Oler says:
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    booster hit hard

  4. duheagle says:
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    Also interesting to note that the “SpaceX Navy” now has two tenders based at Port Canaveral. Go Quest tows OCISLY out and back and provides a base for technical crew near the “landing site.” Based on its name, I wonder if obvious sister ship Go Search is a relatively recent addition to the fleet tasked with chasing down payload fairings?

  5. duheagle says:
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    L2’s a bit pricey for me. I found pictures posted on-line, mostly. I don’t keep constant watch or anything. I first got interested in the subject as part of the research I did for an article I wrote for The Space Review back in April.

    The Adelaide BFR presentation has obsoleted much of what both I and commenters wrote at the time. SpaceX is a fast-mover. Assuming I’m right now about what Go Search is for, then another of my April speculations that turned out to be wrong was that SpaceX might use a boat appreciably speedier than its tenders to bring recovered payload fairing halves back to port – like a modified cigarette boat. It would seem not.

  6. Grey Area says:
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    Interesting they would wait so long to report the incident.

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