The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that exploded into a fiery ball just after landing at sea off California on Sunday had descended with pinpoint accuracy onto an ocean barge before a landing leg buckled, causing the booster to tip over, a landing video showed.
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After successfully delivering a U.S.-European ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit, a SpaceX rocket made a hard landing on a floating barge in the roiling Pacific, breaking a support leg and toppling over Sunday.
On January 17th, 2016 at 10:50am PT/12:50pm CT, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying the Jason-3 spacecraft.
The company is developing soft landings at sea which will allow them to re-use the rockets in future launches, in hopes of making the process more affordable and efficient.
SpaceX does not yet have US government’s permission to land a rocket at the Vandenberg Air Force Base from where it took off.
Main aim of the mission is to offer a more precise look at how global warming and sea level rise affect wind speeds and currents as close as one kilometer (0.6 miles) from shore. However, Musk later clarified events, explaining the leg had failed to deploy in the seconds prior to landing, meaning that however gentle the touchdown, it was nearly certain to come crashing down.
The first two attempts at this experimental landing ended with fantastic explosions as the Falcon 9 rocket failed to stick the landing just right.
During a five-year mission, its data will also be used to aid fisheries management and research into human impacts on the world s oceans.
The landing was so precise, SpaceX said it was within about 4 feet of the droneship’s center. NOAA is partnering with NASA, the French Space Agency CNES, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Its successor, Jason-1, operated from 2001 to 2013.
After Sunday’s launch, Bezos congratulated the company on Twitter. It crashed due to a lack of hyraulic fluid, Musk said.
All told, SpaceX has now failed to land a Falcon 9 booster on a floating barge three times.
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In Pasadena, Jet Propulsion Lab scientists had established radio and video contact with Jason 3, the new weather satellite, and said its twin solar arrays unfolded correctly.
