Starlink 4 - booster loss on landing

SpaceX just lost a Falcon 9 booster. It soft-landed in the ocean just off the starboard side of the drone ship.
They lost the feed from the booster just after reentry burn started and prior to that, there was a piece of debris coming off the booster.

They tried a different orbital insertion today and they said the reentry would be more challenging.
The mission itself was successful.

twitter.com...

Watched it, it looked sooo close you could see the steam. Oops it happens. About 8:40.

spaceflightnow.com...

If something is not nominal, they intentionally miss the barge to avoid further damage.

It was a soft landing so they will likely fish it out and figure out what went wrong.

At least they will have another slightly used booster they can display somewhere likethe Smithsonian.

At like 6 minutes something broke off. Kind of looked like a wiring harness maybe.

a reply to: mightmight

Would have been the 4th landing of that booster. Saw a weird flame out on the second stage as well. A jet was leaking from the foil part above the rocket nozzle. Didn't look right.

I was reading on a SpaceX fb fan page, that this was the toughest booster recovery to date because of the wanted to put the payload in a more elliptical orbit that would only need 1 Second stage burn.

It was this booster 4th flight and would have been statistically the toughest landing to date and it barely missed.

The mission was a huge success despite not landing the booster. With their Starlink missions, they can risk pushing the boundaries of what is possible.