Elon Musk has posted a video on his Instagram account of the moment SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket landed on a floating ocean barge, toppled over and exploded into pieces.
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The Jason-3 launch took place at approximately 10:42 a.m. local time – as scheduled – from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base, along California’s Central Coast.
“SpaceX is continuing to attempt ocean landings as it will give the company better flexibility in recovering higher launch velocity rockets”.
The January 17 launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was through heavy fog at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Though SpaceX had planned to broadcast the landing attempt live, camera footage cut out seconds before touch down.
The failed approach this morning is the third time SpaceX has attempted to land one of their reusable rockets at sea, each time with explosive consequences.
The launch was successful in putting into orbit the US- and European-owned Jason-3 satellite, which aims to map what is happening to the extra heat being trapped inside the earth system by greenhouse gases. After being used to help calibrate the new satellite, Jason-2 will be moved to an orbit to study the shape of the sea floor.
Competitor Blue Origin, headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, succeeded in landing a suborbital rocket in November.
The recovery location for this launch was changed from a stable pad on land to a drone ship because SpaceX was unable to receive “environmental approval” to bring their rocket back to land.
On the official Twitter page, SpaceX explained: “After further data review, stage landed softly but leg 3 didn’t lockout”.
In a tweet, the company said, “First stage on target at drone ship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg”.
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After sending the Jason-3 satellite into orbit the Falcon 9 rocket will attempt to land its discarded first stage on a floating barge in the Pacific Ocean. 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. The Falcon 9 is 14 stories tall and must go from traveling at almost 1,300 meters per second-or just under 1 mile per second-to just two meters per second before it lands.
