While the rocket successfully targeted the barge and came in at the optimum speed, unfortunately a leg lockout didn’t latch, causing the rocket to topple over instead of remaining upright.
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All the signs appeared good after the rocket launched from Vandenberg Airforce Base in California on Sunday night.
SpaceX does not yet have federal clearance to land rockets at Vandenberg, prompting Sunday’s ocean try, company vice president Hans Koenigsmann told reporters on Friday.
After years of testing, including two failed ocean landing attempts, SpaceX last month nailed a touchdown on land in Florida, a key step in founder Elon Musk’s quest to develop a cheap, reusable rocket.
“Jason-3 will continue the legacy of the Topex/Poseidon and earlier Jason satellites by gathering environmental intelligence from the world’s oceans”, Stephen Volz, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, said in the release.
Posting a video on Instagram, Musk showed us a new view of the rocket successfully landing on its platform and then slowly falling over on its side and exploding into flames. “Was within 1.3 meters of droneship center”.
“The measurements from Jason-3 will advance our efforts to understand Earth as an integrated system by increasing our knowledge of sea level changes and the ocean’s roles in climate”, added John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at the NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. SpaceX’s next launch is another satellite, this time for communications firm SES, scheduled to blast off in February. In reference to previous failed landings, Musk remarked: “at least the pieces were bigger this time!”
Seconds before the rocket was to reach the ship’s platform on Sunday, the camera on the drone ship froze, which means footage of the landing is pending at the moment.
“Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that’s also translating and rotating”. Barely three years ago, Mr. Musk and his team estimated the chances of pulling off the technical coup of retrieving a rocket for another flight to be one in five.
If everything goes according to plan, it will take an hour to deploy the satellite.
But SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, had the secondary goal of sticking the landing on the drone ship.
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NASA launched Jason-3 into orbit for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the French space agency and EUMETSAT, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
