Blog Falcon 9 Debris Found on Washington Farm

A piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that broke apart when returning to land was found on a farm in central Washington, local authorities said last week.

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office tweeted details about the discovery.

“SpaceX recovered a Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel from last week’s Falcon 9 re-entry,” the tweet said. “It was found on private property in southwest Grant County this week. Media and treasure hunters: we are not disclosing specifics. The property owner simply wants to be left alone.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/1378031863785263106

COPVs are used to store helium to pressurize the propellant tanks of the Falcon 9’s upper stage. 

The Falcon 9 rocket was used on March 4 for the Starlink 17 mission that launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The wreckage discovered was part of the company’s second-stage booster. The main booster returns to Earth for a landing, while the second stage is usually set on a trajectory to burn up in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean. A malfunction of some sort through the second stage off course. 

 

[Ocelot]

By luck, my kids and I were on a beach, and got to watch the re-entry, zoom across the horizon. I thought it was a meteor at first, but retrospectively moved much slower . As it was heading towards the States, I think my view was somewhat before most videos in the link. Initially was one bright spot in sky, then "blew up" which left the 'streamers" behind it.

Literally a buddy of mine (our kids were playing on the beach) were discussing Elon for like 20 minutes immediately before this happened, with him taking some stance of we cannot leave it to the 'uber-rich' to save the world., and going on about how ridiculous it is to try to colonize Mars. Once I found out it was space X debris..,I noted 'that's the first warning shot, across the bow, ". Never go against Elon.

there are some decent vids in the twitter thread (click on map) by far the coolest thing i have seen in the sky.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375301028514500615

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375299788241915905

 

[bolosky]

This probably the same COPV (though a different size) that's going to be the the new Roadster SpaceX option. The fact that it can survive an uncontrolled reentry does make you think it'll be OK in a car crash.

 

[Tessaract]

A piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that broke apart when returning to land was found on a farm in central Washington, local authorities said last week.

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office tweeted details about the discovery.

“SpaceX recovered a Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel from last week’s Falcon 9 re-entry,” the tweet said. “It was found on private property in southwest Grant County this week. Media and treasure hunters: we are not disclosing specifics. The property owner simply wants to be left alone.”
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Yikes! That COPD would have killed someone if it had hit them. And its all due to a failure of second stage to execute a reentry burn. It's the first S9 MVAC engine failure I'm aware of, and based on that, the probability of failure is less than ~4% ( 1 failure in ~25 LEO insertions). Not as low a failure rate as I would have assumed.

 

[Steve_in_DE]

Yikes! That COPD would have killed someone if it had hit them. And its all due to a failure of second stage to execute a reentry burn. It's the first S9 MVAC engine failure I'm aware of, and based on that, the probability of failure is less than ~4% ( 1 failure in ~25 LEO insertions). Not as low a failure rate as I would have assumed.

Hasn't the F9 flown over 100 flights? And this is the first issue of this sort AFAIK. That makes the failure rate <1%.

 

[GLBledsoe]

What are the odds that a piece of COPV would hit anyone? Pretty small, I'd think. Not the top of my list of worries.

 

[Xcelerator]

By luck, my kids and I were on a beach, and got to watch the re-entry, zoom across the horizon. I thought it was a meteor at first, but retrospectively moved much slower . As it was heading towards the States, I think my view was somewhat before most videos in the link. Initially was one bright spot in sky, then "blew up" which left the 'streamers" behind it.

Literally a buddy of mine (our kids were playing on the beach) were discussing Elon for like 20 minutes immediately before this happened, with him taking some stance of we cannot leave it to the 'uber-rich' to save the world., and going on about how ridiculous it is to try to colonize Mars. Once I found out it was space X debris..,I noted 'that's the first warning shot, across the bow, ". Never go against Elon.

there are some decent vids in the twitter thread (click on map) by far the coolest thing i have seen in the sky.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375301028514500615

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375299788241915905

That is a release of LEO satellites by SpaceX for Starlink internet service. We had something almost identical in North Texas the week of April 5, 2021.

 

[Ocelot]

That is a release of LEO satellites by SpaceX for Starlink internet service. We had something almost identical in North Texas the week of April 5, 2021.

Maybe looked the same, but this was I think return to sender mail, not outgoing. Although could be both ?

space x rocket debris

 

[bxr140]

Hasn't the F9 flown over 100 flights? And this is the first issue of this sort AFAIK. That makes the failure rate <1%.

I recall reading somewhere a week or two ago that this is the fourth anomaly with second stage re-entry. Can't find it and don't know if the anomalies are unrelated.

What are the odds that a piece of COPV would hit anyone? Pretty small, I'd think. Not the top of my list of worries.

Regulatory limit is something like 1 in 10,000 in a 4m^2 area.

 

[SteveBaker]

Not as low a failure rate as I would have assumed.

It's hardly a statistically valid sample!

 

[Tessaract]

It's hardly a statistically valid sample!

Actually, it is. The sample size (number of flights) is large enough to put an upper bound on the failure rate. Such reasoning is standard practice in reliability testing. And with 4 anomalies in 100 flights, the number of anomalies is also large enough to provide a reasonable lower bound to the failure rate.