A Falcon 9 rocket did, however, have a successful landing last month following a launch at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
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“Definitely harder to land on a ship”, he added after the latest foible.
Recycling engines and the Falcon 9’s 14-story, aluminum-lithium alloy first stage also may enable SpaceX, already the cheapest launch provider in its category, to further undercut USA and European rivals.
United States private spacecraft company SpaceX launched on Sunday morning the Jason-3 ocean-measuring satellite, but failed in its attempt to land the spent first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a ship in the Ocean.
SpaceX’s rocket approaches the centre of landing droneship in the Pacific Ocean.
It aims 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, whereas past satellites were limited to about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the coast.
SpaceX failed an ocean landing attempt after a successful lift-off.
Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: “much smaller target area, that’s also translating & rotating”, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted.
The Jason-3 mission is a joint effort involving NOAA, NASA, the French space agency CNES and the European meteorology-satellite organization EUMETSAT.
About 10 minutes after launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Falcon 9 first stage was scheduled to land on a drone ship floating in the ocean. Apart from that, SpaceX hasn’t received an environmental approval for ground landings and it had to move the landing site.
During a press conference on Friday, SpaceX vice president of mission assurance Hans Koenigsmann said that they’d like to attempt a land recovery at Vandenberg Air Force Base in the future.
Musk tweeted his congratulations, but followed up with a series of tweets debating Bezos’ use of the word “rarest”.
The SpaceX project has put a satellite which will monitor the climate into space but failed to land its reusable vehicle on an ocean platform for the first time.
“Jason-3 data will be used for monitoring global sea level rise, researching human impacts on oceans, aiding prediction of hurricane intensity, and operational marine navigation”, NASA said.
The barge landing attempt would not be visible from shore because it will occur beyond the horizon, he said.
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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.
