[peterwaller]

Of the centre core, these are the last few moments before it is lost from the feed. Smoke can be seen...

https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=38m20s

... and then back to the presenters. As someone said to me, "That's their lying face!" :)

Can't fault them for wanting to dwell on the positives though, was an amazing moment to watch.

Edit: You can switch cameras on the above youtube video to the countdown net; you can clearly hear them saying "We lost the centre core" at 38m30s - not sure if that means "lost signal of" or otherwise. The people in the control room appear to become more muted at that point, though they still seem composed. It's really not clear.

Edit: On the countdown net you can hear some minutes later "suspected loss of signal": https://youtu.be/-B_tWbjFIGI?t=42m21s

[dz0ny]

Center core lost, announced on internal feed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&feature=youtu.be...

[peterwaller]

At this point in that video, some minutes after the loss of signal, you can hear on the countdown net https://youtu.be/-B_tWbjFIGI?t=42m21s - it's garbled but sounds like "Suspected loss of signal".

[djsumdog]

But they also say the insertion was successful. So the payload made it, but they were planning to recover the center and that failed?

[amckenna]

Correct. There were several goals with the launch. The primary was successful payload insertion, the secondary goals were the successful return of the outer two boosters to land, and the central booster to a drone ship down range (success unknown). Additionally the goal was to recover the fairings, but the success of that is not publicly known at this time.

[Timothycquinn]

According to News Conference: 1) Elon confirmed that the faring recovery was not a goal as they have a new version of the faring in active development which should have a recovery strategy in place. 2) It appears that the center booster was definitely lost. 3) Loss of center booster was best case scenario for loosing one of the three boosters as the outer boosters had really sweet new titanium grid fins.

[Klathmon]

Can't fault them for sure, but it's strange for them. SpaceX tends to be very upfront with their failures, and tends to broadcast and in many cases re-upload video of their failures.

Doubly so when the "failure" isn't part of the primary mission.

[stupidcar]

They know how the press works though. There's a huge amount of attention being paid to this launch, and journalists will be racing to report it ASAP. If they announce immediately that the centre core has been destroyed, the headlines around the world are going to be "SPACEX LAUNCHES CAR BUT LOSES SPACECRAFT", and the failure, however partial, will be a central plank of the story.

If they delay the core announcement by a couple of hours or so, the headlines are all "SPACEX SENDS CAR TO MARS", with a minor note appended later to say, "A SpaceX spokesperson later confirmed the landing of the spacecraft's central core did not succeed and it has been lost." Like it or not, issues of timing like this makes a big difference to how the exact same events are reported and perceived.

[sneak]

Yeah, presumably they worked out the various optimal messaging strategies for every possible combination of failure/success of each part of the mission in advance. Amazing work on their part; I was super impressed after I deduced what you wrote about 2 minutes after the stream ended.

[peterwaller]

Agree it is strange. I love their "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster" film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

Watching the countdown net it seemed plausible that they didn't know whether it had successfully landed either.

[DavidSJ]

It wasn't a lie; they just didn't know the result. There have been multiple cases in the past when contact was temporarily lost after drone ship landing.

[kzrdude]

It's ok to be professional and say that you need a day to look at a failure (if it's that) before you announce it with the beginnings of an understanding.

[kevin_thibedeau]

A restart failure indicates there may be a systemic flaw in all Falcons that could impact recovery efforts in the future as well as other missions that depend on reliable restart capability. One would hope that they have enough telemetry to diagnose the cause.

[Klathmon]

I'm sure they do, they normally have pretty detailed information on failures.

But even in the worst case first stage engine restart issues will never halt falcon launches. The first stage engines don't ever need to restart to complete the primary mission, and while landing the first stages is a great bonus, it is and always will be a secondary mission objective.

[rtkwe]

They do eventually come out with it but pretty much every failure they've had so far they've kind of glossed over it during the livestream then come back to it later during a separate press conference.

[nohat]

The feed quality drops in a way that makes the shaking antennae explanation seem plausible. I doubt the announcers knew then (why not just say so unless there was some ambiguity?), but it must have been a distinct concern, hence their 'smile nervously' reaction.

It is a bit odd they haven't announced that it was lost yet, but I agree that seems very likely.

[jen729w]

FWIW the drone ship feed has been lost in exactly the same way every time I’ve watched a landing.

[geerlingguy]

I can concur. There’s always 5-10 seconds starting right as the exhaust enters the frame when it cuts. IIRC they have one or two satellite uplinks and they go down due to the vibration.

Also in the video if you watch mission control’s wall of monitors you can see the feed cut back with an empty drone ship a minute or so later. Seems to confirm that the rocket missed the deck due to the engines not lighting.

[andrewwharton]

I noticed on the top right screen when landing the 2 outside boosters that they did a 3 engine landing burn. Previously they'd only done this over the water, but considering that the last one went well on 31 Jan, perhaps they also tried a 3 engine landing burn over the drone ship this time and something went wrong.

Just speculation, but it makes sense to me...