By Darrell Etherington – TechCrunch
July 03, 2019 – SpaceX managed another first for its reusable rocketry efforts during its most recent launch when it caught part of the fairing in a giant net mounted on a boat named “Ms. Tree.” The nosecone component, used to protect the Falcon Heavy’s cargo during its June 25 launch, typically is either lost or falls into the ocean, where it can sometimes be recovered, albeit at great cost.
Now, we have video of the fairing returning back through the atmosphere, and of the actual moment the fairing touches down on the barge, captured by onboard cameras set up by SpaceX. The fairing-return video, below, gives you a good sense of what it’s like when one of these components returns to Earth in terms of the stresses that are on the hardware from the extreme heat generated by friction from the Earth’s atmosphere.
View from the fairing during the STP-2 mission; when the fairing returns to Earth, friction heats up particles in the atmosphere, which appear bright blue in the video pic.twitter.com/P8dgaIfUbl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 3, 2019
View from the fairing during the STP-2 mission; when the fairing returns to Earth, friction heats up particles in the atmosphere, which appear bright blue in the video pic.twitter.com/P8dgaIfUbl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 3, 2019