Native speaker here. I think you're correct that it's somewhat contradictory. Gabriel says two things: 1) They were off by a factor of 100 in predicting the shock wave disturbances, and 2) The vehicle was able to recover.

I think his comment about advancing understanding is more referring to (2) than (1), although now that you point it out, it's hard to say you understand something well if you're off by two orders of magnitude...