26-01-2016 15:00

To infinity and beyond! Well, not quite…

This is the SpaceX Falcon’s fall from grace. The rocket exploded on landing after successfully delivering an ocean-monitoring satellite to orbit.

The footage was posted online by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, identifying the cause of the problem as one of the rocket’s legs collapsing as it tried to land on a floating ocean barge.

And this isn’t the first glitch that SpaceX has suffered. The company hasn’t launched a rocket since the Falcon 9 exploded in June. But despite these hiccups, the company managed a historic first controlled return of an orbital stage just last month.

The launch may have been a success, but this seems to be a case of failure to land.

Difficult words: to infinity and beyond (this is a saying from a movie called “Toy Story” and it means to go exploring far past where we know about), falcon (a type of bird which is very fast), fall from grace (losing prestige), orbit (the orbit around Earth – the circular route on which satellites move around Earth), footage (video), CEO (a chief executive officer – the boss of a company), barge (a big ship which cannot move fast), glitch (a problem), launch (to send a rocket on its way), hiccup (a small problem) failure to land (this means two things: to not finish something properly and to not land correctly).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com