James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket met a violent end Wednesday morning, but not before helping a pair of communications satellites fly gracefully into orbit.

The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on time at 10:29 a.m., rumbling southeast over the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX had hoped to achieve a fourth consecutive landing of a Falcon 9 booster on a ship stationed down range, a feat that would have made such landings start to look routine.

But the booster came in too fast, resulting, CEO Elon Musk said, in a “RUD”: Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. In other words, it crashed.

“Maybe hardest impact to date,” Musk said on Twitter.

Low thrust on one of the three Merlin engines apparently was to blame, preventing the rocket stage from slowing down enough before it hit an unmanned “drone ship” about the length of a football field, floating more than 200 miles off the Florida coast.

A camera on the modified barge named “Of Course I Still Love You” froze at the instant of touchdown, leaving many SpaceX employees and viewers of the company's Webcast in suspense for a while about the outcome.

The purpose of the landings is to figure out how to make rockets reusable, which Musk believes is essential to making spaceflight more affordable.

“This is all experimental,” SpaceX engineer Michael Hammersley said during the Webcast. “We’re very excited for the day when it becomes regular. But clearly we’re not quite there yet.”

Schedule of upcoming Florida rocket launches

[More: Space news by FLORIDA TODAY]

So for the first time since April, a Falcon 9 booster will not return intact to Port Canaveral after launch.

But SpaceX says it gains valuable experience even from failed landings. Musk said upgrades will try to help the rocket overcome the thrust issue that thwarted Wednesday's attempt.

Meanwhile, the rocket’s upper stage completed the day's primary mission: placing satellites owned by Paris-based Eutelsat and Bermuda-based ABS on their way to orbits 22,300 miles over the equator.

A rocket camera showed a beautiful image of the second satellite, ABS-2A, pushing gently away into space, floating toward a blazing sun above the curved ring of Earth.

Delta IV Heavy blasts off from Cape Canaveral with spy satellite

The satellite pair was the second SpaceX launched for the companies in 15 months. All four Boeing-built spacecraft are notable for using only electric propulsion.

Instead of carrying heavy fuel tanks, the satellites use pulses of xenon gas to generate very slight acceleration — similar in force to that of a piece of paper sitting on your hand.

That will be enough to enable the Eutelsat 117 West B and ABS-2A spacecraft to settle slowly into their operational orbits, a process is expected to take at least six months.

SpaceX lands fourth booster after successful Falcon 9 launch

Eutelsat's 41st satellite will bolster its TV and data services to Mexico, Central America and South America, while services from ABS' seventh satellite are targeted to parts of Russia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa.

SpaceX achieved its sixth successful launch of 2016, tying its best mark for any calendar year, nearly a year after the Falcon 9 suffered its only failure in now 26 flights. The company can claim its best year ever with an upcoming launch of International Space Station cargo for NASA, planned no earlier than July 16.

SpaceX is expected to try to land that Falcon 9 booster back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's "Landing Zone 1," site of the first successful Falcon landing in December.

Wednesday's launch was the second from the Cape in five days, following a Saturday flight by United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket. ULA is preparing an Atlas V rocket to launch a Navy satellite in just over a week, on Friday, June 24.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.