Elon Musk's SpaceX Rocket Crashes During Landing After successfully launching two satellites, the Falcon 9 crashed while attempting to land on a barge.

By Dan Bova Jun 16, 2016

Minutes after successfully launching two satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Falcon 9 rocket crashed while attempting to land on an ocean barge on Wednesday. Taking to Twitter, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reported the chain of events:

Ascent phase & satellites look good, but booster rocket had a RUD on droneship
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2016

Looks like thrust was low on 1 of 3 landing engines. High g landings v sensitive to all engines operating at max.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2016

RUD = Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly :)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2016

Upgrades underway to enable rocket to compensate for a thrust shortfall on one of the three landing engines. Probably get there end of year.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2016

Landing video will be posted when we gain access to cameras on the droneship later today. Maybe hardest impact to date. Droneship still ok.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2016

Entrepreneur will post the video as soon as it is made available. We just hope those drone pilots were wearing their seatbelts. Above is a video of the rocket's successful launch.

Dan Bova

Entrepreneur Staff

VP of Special Projects

Dan Bova is the VP of Special Projects at Entrepreneur.com. He previously worked at Jimmy Kimmel Live, Maxim, and Spy magazine. His latest books for kids include This Day in History, Car and Driver's Trivia Zone, Road & Track Crew's Big & Fast Cars, The Big Little Book of Awesome Stuff, and Wendell the Werewolf.

Read his humor column This Should Be Fun if you want to feel better about yourself.

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