JUST IN :SpaceX Rocket Crashes Into Explodes On Autonomous Barge

On Monday, Sifter reported that SpaceX’s ambitious goal to land and reuse a Falcon 9 rocket had resulted in failure. This week, we bring you some spectacular footage of the crash. Check out Popular Mechanics’ coverage for a second-by-second breakdown of what went wrong, provided by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Twitter. In classic aerospace engineering fashion, Musk refers to the explosion as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Understatement of the year? Props for even hitting the boat though, SpaceX: You’ll get ’em next time.

Elon Musk has revealed video and details of the crash of the Falcon 9 booster as it attempted to make an historic powered landing after the launch of the CRS-5 mission. In a series of brief statements on Twitter, the SpaceX founder and CEO explained the cause of the crash and future plans for the company’s ambitions to produce a fully reusable space launch system.

It was at this point that things began to go wrong. Instead of coming down slow and straight, the Falcon 9 dropped at a precarious angle, striking the deck of the autonomous spaceport drone ship. The remaining fuel in the booster tanks detonated on impact, blasting the rocket to pieces and damaging deck equipment on the barge.

According to Musk, the cause of the crash was a failure of the grid-like hypersonic vanes that are used to control the attitude of the rocket during its descent through the Earth’s atmosphere. Musk says that there was a 10 percent shortage of the hydraulic fluid used by the vanes by the time the rocket started its final landing maneuver, resulting in the rocket being unable to stay upright.

“Upcoming flight already has 50% more hydraulic fluid, so should have plenty of margin for landing attempt next month,” Musk tweeted.