The booster used on the Ares 1-X test rocket on Wednesday was damaged as soon as it fell back into the ocean, the US space agency (NASA) says.
Recovery team is sent to retrieve the stage from waters east of the Kennedy Space Center found a huge dent in the side of the booster.
The damage resulted from failures in the parachute system, NASA added.
The Ares 1-X was a demonstrator for the vehicle NASA plans to use in the next decade to launch astronauts into orbit.
Wednesday's two-minute sub-orbital mission was projected to help verify design assumptions so that when the final vehicle is built, the engineers may be confident it will fly as predicted.
Once the first stage booster had completed its burn, it separated from a dummy upper-stage and all the elements fell back to Earth.
Wednesday's two-minute sub-orbital mission was projected to help verify design assumptions so that when the final vehicle is built, the engineers may be confident it will fly as predicted.
Once the first stage booster had completed its burn, it separated from a dummy upper-stage and all the elements fell back to Earth.
NASA expected the simulation stage to be destroyed, but engineers wanted to examine the booster. It had a parachute system to slowdown its descent towards the ocean and it now appears two of the three parachutes malfunctioned.
The booster would have hit the stream harder than predicted, causing the dent later discovered by the recovery divers.
Ares managers said they were not too worried by what had happened as the booster was never going to be used for the second time.
"Don't play this too much," said Bob Ess, the Ares 1-X mission manager.
"The parachute thing was like 'Hey, look at that'. We are not worried about that. There is no investigation. There is no unusual thing we are doing. We are just going all the way throughout our usual post (flight) tests," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
The parachute system would be studied to find out why it had not worked properly, he added.
The booster would have hit the stream harder than predicted, causing the dent later discovered by the recovery divers.
Ares managers said they were not too worried by what had happened as the booster was never going to be used for the second time.
"Don't play this too much," said Bob Ess, the Ares 1-X mission manager.
"The parachute thing was like 'Hey, look at that'. We are not worried about that. There is no investigation. There is no unusual thing we are doing. We are just going all the way throughout our usual post (flight) tests," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
The parachute system would be studied to find out why it had not worked properly, he added.
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