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.
Advertisement
After a successful mission on Sunday afternoon out of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, SpaceX attempted to land the first stage of its un-crewed two-stage Falcon 9 rocket for a second time in a row, but the attempt was unsuccessful.
With an aim to detect and measure ocean phenomena like El Nino, NASA has scheduled to launch the latest in the series of U.S.-European satellites on Sunday at 10:42 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, with a backup opportunity on Monday.
“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”.
Musk said that once engine 9 was sacked up again, it “showed some thrust fluctuations” that were unanticipated and engineers are now trying to figure out what is causing the issue.
Therefore, we can likely expect to see more rocket landing attempts like this in the future. Elon Musk however stays positive, saying that at the very least, the rocket is not in too much debris as the previous landing attempts resulted in. “Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn’t latch, so it tipped over after landing”.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket approaches floating drone ship, seconds before tipping over in a spectacular crash.
SpaceX’s landing attempt on Sunday was the third time the privately owned firm had tried to recover a rocket on an ocean platform.
The private spaceflight company SpaceX did successfully launch an ocean studies satellite called Jason 3 into orbit yesterday (January 17, 2016).
Despite ocean landings being hard, SpaceX would like to return their rockets to allow more flexibility and reuse of parts.
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.
Advertisement
SpaceX made history last month by landing one of its Falcon 9 rocket stages on land at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket, carrying 11 communications satellites for Orbcomm is the first launch of the rocket since a failed mission to the International Space Station in June, 2015.
