Dragon CRS-3 has safely land in the Pacific on 18 May 2014, at 19:05 UTC. This was a flight with many highlights.
CRS-3 was the forth succesfull launch of upgraded Falcon-9 v1.1 and the firsts v1.1 launch of Dragon. It was also the first flight with the cool new landing legs.
One of the miles stones was the first attempt of landing the the first stage, which was very succesful. For safety reasons this test was performed on the Pacific ocean. Telemetry showed that the first stage as planned decelerated to vertical speed of almost zero before toughing down. Due to bad weather and high seas the first stage couldn’t be recovered and when the weather cleared after two days, only bits and peaces where found back. Luckily the dedicated plane could catch the live telemetry and some video. The video link was quiet bad. After extensive restaration work, we can now witness how the Falcon-9 first stage slowly descents and how the exhaust gasses steer up the water as it’s closes in to the surface.
