Musk Confirms Slow Throttle Valve Doomed Falcon 9 First Stage

Image Credit: SpaceX

After first tweeting and then deleting, SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed Saturday night that slow response from a thruster valves was the cause of last week’s close but no cigar effort at landing a Falcon 9 first stage at sea.

Cause of hard rocket landing confirmed as due to slower than expected throttle valve response. Next attempt in 2 months.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2015

Musk went on to confirm that the next landing attempt will take place during the CRS-7 mission currently scheduled for June 19th.

As for the next Falcon 9 launch, Florida Today states that SpaceX is now targeting next Monday, April 27th at 6:14 PM EDT. That mission, bound for geosynchronous transfer orbit will loft a a communications satellite for Turkmenistan. It is listed on the SpaceX manifest as Thales, in reference to Thales Alenia Aerospace which both built the satellite and booked the flight.

Finally, the CRS-6 Dragon spacecraft berthed with the International Space Station on Friday, following a flawless flight and rendezvous. NASA has the details on its new radically upgraded and mobile friendly website.