Falcon 9 water landing, 5 December 2018

Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage suffered a landing anomaly, failing to land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Instead, the Falcon 9 first stage made a water landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The Falcon 9 rocket launched the CRS-16 Dragon spacecraft from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on 5 December 2018, at 18:16 UTC (13:16 EST).
Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX
#CRS16

[FrikInCasualMode]

Amazing! Even with malfunction, the stage still managed to land in a controlled manner - softly enough it survived in one piece. It might even be salvageable! SpaceX's engineering is top notch.

[RippanYT]

The failure happened in the best way.
1. The mission was a success.
2. They knew about the issue right away (the pump)
3. They recovered the booster and the faulty pump
4. Nobody got hurt, everything in their failsafe routines worked as they should.

Even when SpaceX fails... its a success!

[davidhenderson]

That is just amazing. Even crippled the way it was the navcom was still able to do a controlled landing. If it had a boat motor I bet it would have driven itself back to shore. That was top notch flying.

[salameez]

"I'll try spinning, that's a good trick!"

[BigWater]

Live up to your mistakes and improve. I like this company and its lack of BS.

[LovelyLifeVines]

Atleast not hiding their small failures also. Hats off Spacex. Elon Musk Rocks 🤘

[akorn]

Thank you for this footage, I’m glad they decided to release it.

[Voltaic]

Elon stated that they may use the Booster for Intern Missions again. And even if not.. alone the grid fins are worth alot! So its probably still 80% of cost savings of a successful upright landing!
Go SpaceX! You do have our Support for the amazing work you are doing!

[snakedike]

Every time we experience a failure we learn something new to make it better. Go SpaceX

[cogoid]

Kudos to whomever designed the control system for this rocket! That was very impressive that it was still able to function despite grid fins stuck in a really unfortunate state.

[locouk]

Even with such a major malfunction, it can hardly be classed as a failure.. It’s still serviceable!
These things are out of this world.

[bustinga]

This is just a small step for a brighter future in the space exploration and Rocket programs. Hats off.

[bern]

Holy shit the control systems engineers deserve a massive pat on the back here....

[silversurfer]

This was perfect landing and possibilities that this can be used for are so endless This means we now can drop out of space and into the sea. A+++

[Jimswholiestofcoleus]

There is No Failure here.... Only the success of learning from what happened. ELON MUSK THE PIONEER OF OUR GENERATION!!!

[guscanelo]

Thank you SciNews, as always the best source for videos / footages of rocket launch and spaceflight!

[Ryusennin]

"I will not dive without a fight."

[glmarketingdude]

A great proof of conclusive engineering and aerodynamics. In failure the Falcon still returned and went from space acceleration in flight, to settling into the water at around 5 mph. This is not by chance, but by the best engineering talent we can muster. May every success come to this “Free Enterprise” space program.

[koitao]

At least it didn't explode. That's a win in my book

[CheersWarren]

Even though it was a technician failure the booster was doing an almost perfect landing, unfortunately it was on water for safety sake. Stunning, incredible engineering. Cheers Warren