Drone Footage Shows SpaceX Giant Net Testing on the Water

On a rocket, including on the Falcon, the fairing is the nose cone used to protect the cargo being shipped to orbit. Once orbit reached, the fairing detaches, and the cargo is delivered.

Obsessed with recovering almost everything from every launch SpaceX conducts, Musk has tried various ways to catch the pieces falling back to the ocean, including by using a net. Without success.

A few days back, Elon Musk tweeted that “catching rocket fairings falling from space has proven tricky, so we made the net really big.”

The net has therefore been upgraded, as it can be seen in the video attached below. YouTuber Drone Dronester shot these images of the ship and the net it is carrying over the weekend, as the tech is being put through its paces off the coast of Los Angeles.

According to the info available, the new, bigger net covers 3,700 square meters, four times the area of the one used until now with zero success.

The attempt made by SpaceX to recover the fairing back in February ended in an ironic twist. The fairing coming down from heaven missed the net that was supposed to stop of from wrecking and landed intact on the surface of the ocean.

Since that might not happen all the time, Musk needs a way to catch “ $6 million in cash in a palette flying through the air.”

To help guide the fairing down towards the net, SpaceX fitted the fairings with a guidance system and small thrusters to help them change direction. As the part approaches the surface of our planet, parafoils are deployed to slow down their fall.