SpaceX witnesses partial success of Falcon1's second test flight

The privately-built Falcon 1 rocket’s second test flight, dubbed DemoFlight 2, reached space after launching from a Pacific atoll Tuesday, but probably failed to reach its intended orbit due to a glitch that cropped up nearly five minutes later with the booster's second-stage engine.

The budget rocket developed by millionaire Elon Musk, chief of El Segundo, California based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), shot spaceward from its Pacific island launch site at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 March 21 GMT), but suffered a roll control malfunction 300 kilometers above Earth before completing its flight plan, SpaceX builders reported.

After lifting off from Omelek Island, a US military missile test site that is part of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the 21m booster rocket successfully arrived in space minutes later but then re-entered the Earth's atmosphere after half an orbit because of a problem during the second-stage burn.

The rocket was intended to end its mission about 10 minutes after liftoff at an altitude of about 685 kilometers, but the roll glitch forced it to end early, a setback for the hopes for the cheaper cargo flights and space ferries.

Despite affected by the roll control glitch that restricted the rocket to complete full orbit, the launch of Falcon 1 was characterized by Musk as "a pretty good test" during a post-flight teleconference.

"We successfully reached space and really retired almost all the risk associated with the rocket, so I feel very good about where things are," he said. On the roll problem, Musk said, "We feel that's something pretty straightforward to fix."

Although the cause of the malfunction can be root out only after a subsequent analysis, but Musk speculate it could have been due to a range of issues, such as helium leak or a roll control jet glitch.

SpaceX’s Tuesday’s launch was a demonstration for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA), which also funded Falcon 1’s ill-fated debut in March 2006, and was designed primarily to gather flight data.

The first test of 70-foot-long, two-stage booster failed shortly after liftoff due to a fuel leak and subsequent fire that forced an engine shutdown about 34 seconds into liftoff. The glitch were initially thought to be the result of human error, but was later traced to be due to the corrosion of a small aluminum nut.

Powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, Falcon 1 is designed to carry up to 1,256 pounds (570 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit for a flat price of about US$7 million per space shot.

Since the failure of its inaugural space shot last year, SpaceX has literally made hundreds of improvements to both the Falcon 1 rocket and its ground support facilities on the Kwajalein Atoll.

“We successfully reached space, and really retired almost all of the risk associated with the rocket,” Musk added.

Born in South Africa, Musk is now a citizen of the United States and is the founder of Internet financial services firm PayPal now owned by eBay. Musk became a multimillionaire after selling PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.