Alert: There's a Lost Spaceship in the Ocean
In science fiction, we often have the trope of a spacecraft becoming lost in space — but what about being lost at sea?
That's what happened this week with an eight-foot-wide experimental spacecraft flown by a European aerospace outfit called The Exploration Company, according to a company statement on LinkedIn. When the vehicle came back to Earth, mission control lost contact with the craft when it entered the ocean.
"The capsule was launched successfully, powered the payloads nominally in-orbit, stabilized itself after separation with the launcher, re-entered and re-established communication after black out," the company wrote on Tuesday.
"But it encountered an issue afterwards, based on our current best knowledge, and we lost communication a few minutes before splash down," the statement continued. "We are still investigating the root causes and will share more information soon."
The unmanned spacecraft, dubbed Mission Possible — a test capsule for a future cargo- and astronaut-carrying craft — was successful in that it was able to shoot into space, make an orbit around Earth, survive its fiery descent back home, and establish contact with mission control.
Of course, that was all before it got lost at sea.
Monday afternoon was its launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California, according to Ars Technica. It hitched a ride on a SpaceX mission that also launched 70 payloads, along with human remains for a space memorial.
The Exploration Company leadership is calling it a success, saying it proved that putting together a mission using low-cost, off-the-shelf parts — such as parachutes from SpaceX's Dragon — can result in a successfully launched capsule. Mission Possible was built at a cost of about $20 million.
Possible next steps for the company include building a more advanced and reusable cargo vehicle called Nyx, according to Ars, which could eventually carry humans back and forth between Earth and the Moon.
More on spacecrafts: Chinese Spacecraft Accused of Dumping Experimental Fuel in Streak Seen Across American Sky
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