This Is How SpaceX Fixed Its Drone Ship Cameras to Capture Landings

Now, you can finally watch the rocket land on the drone ship.
Loukia Papadopoulos

One of the most exciting parts of a rocket launch is when the rocket returns to Earth and lands exactly on the drone ship waiting for it at sea. For years, this intriguing part of space missions could never be captured as the cameras tended to break right before the rocket landed.

Luckily, recently SpaceX managed to fix its cameras to capture the landing and we could not be happier. But how did the space firm achieve this lofty goal? What did it take to make the cameras function till the very end of the mission?

Well, first engineers had to take into account the rocket's ability to communicate with the drone ship. This is difficult because as the rocket reenters the atmosphere it's traveling at hypersonic speeds.

This causes the rocket to heat up the air around it creating a plasma layer to form that interferes with communication around the base of the rocket. This creates an enormous amount of noise in the signal.

It is speculated that to fix this problem, SpaceX placed its transmissions on different parts of the rocket. However, this is only half of the problem. What's the other part and how did SpaceX go about fixing it? Watch the video to find out more.

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