The change from landing in the Pacific to the Indian Ocean is really interesting but I haven’t seen much detail about why it’s happening. The best I’ve come up with is that Starlink improvements allow for enough telemetry that the Pacific Missile Test Range facilities aren’t needed any more, but it would be great to find out more about why it’s changed.
Testing Raptor relighting on the float would be my guess. If the deceleration burn fails, the ballistic trajectory would still bring it down in the IFT-1 and IFT-2 target area.
The change from landing in the Pacific to the Indian Ocean is really interesting but I haven’t seen much detail about why it’s happening. The best I’ve come up with is that Starlink improvements allow for enough telemetry that the Pacific Missile Test Range facilities aren’t needed any more, but it would be great to find out more about why it’s changed.
Testing Raptor relighting on the float would be my guess. If the deceleration burn fails, the ballistic trajectory would still bring it down in the IFT-1 and IFT-2 target area.