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A piece of a SpaceX rocket just washed ashore after spending over a year at sea, and the pictures are incredible
While some of us were busy munching on turkey this Thanksgiving, a crew of men off the coast of the Isles of Scilly were busy retrieving a piece of SpaceX history. Here's a man on the Lyonesse Lady freight boat hoisting a piece from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that's been floating in the ocean for over 14 months:
(James Druce, Rob Featherstone, Dean Whillis, and Kieran Husband)
At first, they weren't quite sure what they had found because the object was covered in goose barnacles. But after wiping a few of the oceanic filter-feeding crustaceans off, they discovered an American flag.
(James Druce, Rob Featherstone, Dean Whillis, and Kieran Husband)
The Isles of Scilly lies about 30 miles off the southwestern tip of England. Clearly, this large piece of metal was a long way from home.
(James Druce, Rob Featherstone, Dean Whillis, and Kieran Husband)
As they wiped more barnacles from its surface, the men found tell-tale signs that they had discovered a piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. But they weren't sure which mission to which the rocket belonged.
(James Druce, Rob Featherstone, Dean Whillis, and Kieran Husband)
Judging from all of the barnacle build up, the rocket piece had been in the water for a long time. But how long?
One of the men, James Druce, took to the Internet for help.
(James Druce, Rob Featherstone, Dean Whillis, and Kieran Husband)
He posted some photos on Imgur, explained the discovery on Reddit, and reached out to Elon Musk — founder and CEO of SpaceX — on Twitter:
Might this be your bit of a space rocket found on Scilly, @elonmusk @SpaceX ? https://t.co/ckHnKeQiiR Found https://t.co/3SyA3xmzAZ
— James Druce (@James_Druce) November 26, 2015
Musk has not responded since Druce's tweet from Thursday, but he didn't have to.
A band of SpaceX fans in the Reddit community, called /r/SpaceX, quickly banned together to tackle the mystery of the unidentified rocket mission.
(James Druce, Rob Featherstone, Dean Whillis, and Kieran Husband)
Luckily, they had a nearly perfect piece from the rocket to work with, which included the American Flag and Falcon 9 logo on it.
After addressing more than a dozen Falcon 9 launches over the past 3 years and comparing how the logos differed, one Reddit commenter thinks they have the answer:
Comment from discussion Scilly Falcon 9 - Updates.
And Druce agreed on Twitter:
We've worked it out @tim_hume ! https://t.co/sHH8KhxF0B The Scilly rocket came from the CRS-4 mission
— James Druce (@James_Druce) November 27, 2015
SpaceX's successful CRS-4 mission launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 21, 2014 — about 14 months ago!
It was the fourth unmanned resupply mission that SpaceX had launched to the International Space Station under a contract with NASA.
The piece that washed ashore is what's called the interstage module, which connects the first and second stages of the rocket. This piece landed in the Atlantic Ocean after helping transport the second stage and a Dragon spacecraft to space.
Among the Dragon's cargo was the first 3D printer to go to space and 20 mice for research on the long-term effects of space on mammals. Here's the piece of rocket that washed ashore:
(Uploaded by Anythingcouldhappen on Wikipedia)
Druce told Business Insider on Twitter that he has contacted SpaceX about the piece and is now waiting for a response.
If SpaceX does not want to retrieve the long-lost, logo-decorated rocket piece, then Druce has one idea of what to do with it, which he told Motherboard's Becky Ferreira:
“Tresco Abbey Gardens has an amazing and beautiful display of wrecked ship figureheads, called 'Valhalla,'” he said. “It would be brilliant to display it there—pieces of wrecked ship, from both the naval age and the space age, all ending up on Scilly.”
Druce later released this video on YouTube of the SpaceX rocket being driven to a storage unit:
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