SpaceX's Spectacular and Surreal Video of Hottest Falcon Heavy Fairing Reentry Yet
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket successfully deployed its primary payload and two smaller satellites to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) on its first fully expendable mission. Although none of the rocket's three booster stages could be recovered, SpaceX attempted to recover the rocket's fairings, which encapsulate and protect payloads launched to space. The newly released SpaceX video of the ViaSat-3 mission shows the fairings splitting apart and falling back to Earth, with one fairing's free fall through the atmosphere producing a "large trail of plasma in its wake." The fairing later deployed its parachute and performed a soft water landing in the Atlantic Ocean, with the recovery ship retrieving it over 1,200 miles from the launch site.