John Carmack is on live explaining what happened with the flight. They initially had problems this morning with icing on their LOX lines, apparently because they were not able to store the vehicles overnight in a heated hangar. He says the flight went well up until landing, but hasn’t explained what exactly went wrong during the landing.
John Herrington, one of the Challenge judges, just explained that one of the legs on the vehicle was damaged on landing, causing a small fire. They will not fly the vehicle again today, but they may repair and fly it tomorrow, or else fly their other vehicle, Texel, tomorrow.
Update 2:15 pm MDT: Carmack was interviewed and provided more details about what happened. Apparently they landed a little faster than they planned and broke a shock absorber on one of the vehicle’s legs. That broke the leg, which in turned caused the engine thrust to burn some electronics in the vehicle. They are still planning to repair Pixel tonight and making some tweaks to the flight control software to avoid a hard landing like that in the future; they may cannibalize some parts, like a landing leg, from their other vehicle, Texel.
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