Last night, a private launch vehicle from SpaceX Corporation made it most of the way to orbit. According to their website:
Falcon flew far beyond the “edge” of space, typically thought of as around 60 miles. Our altitude was approximately 200 miles, which is just 50 miles below the International Space Station. The second stage didn’t achieve full orbital velocity, due to a roll excitation late in the burn[.]
That means they had a failure late in the flight that made the spacecraft fall back to Earth. Not a complete failure, but seeing as the goal was to get something up into space and have it stay there, this certainly wasn’t a success.
Why then do we have Space.com (first below) and New Scientist Magazine (second) reporting the exact same story in opposite ways?
