(Scott Stevenson) wrote in
:


At about T +4 minutes, you can start to see some oscillation of the
second stage engine bell--it's making small clockwise circles at just
under one rev per second. They didn't seem to get much faster, but
the oscillations certainly got bigger during the remainder of the
flight.

Also, I'm certainly no expert, but at first stage separation, there
seemed to be a lot of yaw in the rocket before the second stage lit.
I don't know if the first stage didn't separate cleanly, or what, but
it just looked odd.

You must have been looking at video of the second launch last year. In
that case, the separation was "dirty" and knocked the upper stage
off-attitude before guidance reasserted control.

On this, the third launch attempt, it was stated that the two
stages completely failed to separate at all, ending the mission. While
I definitely saw roll oscillation during ascent, it was stated that
first stage operation was 'normal' right up to main engine shutdown.
The shutdown was not shown on the video feed, which was apparently
delayed-broadcast.

We'll have to wait at least a few days for the failure analysis.

--Damon