SpaceX chief Elon Musk has just uploaded to his Instagram account video of his Falcon 9 rocket landing back on a drone ship in the Pacific ocean, slowly tipping over, and exploding into bright orange flames.
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The botched landing marked the California-based company’s fourth such failed attempt to save carrier rockets, disrupting its plan to reduce launch costs by recycling them instead of letting them fall into the ocean.
SpaceX is trying to land its rocket back on Earth so it can re-use the parts in the future, as the company headed by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk tries to make spaceflight cheaper and more sustainable than before.
The rocket made the hard landing Sunday after launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Los Angeles, and successfully delivering an ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit.
The Jason-3 is created to measure sea level variations and changes to the ocean’s topography, helping teh agencies better predict hurricanes and severe weather.
SpaceX on FlickrPhoto of Sunday’s rocket landing attempt, seconds before touch down.
In December the company managed to land a rocket on land, an achievement only managed so far by another private space firm, Blue Origin, whose New Shepherd rocket landed safely in Texas in November.
In an image providfed by NASA TV, Space-X’s Falcon 9 rocket with the Jason-3 satellite aboard is shown less than four minutes from launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016.
Previous attempts had come close to landing on the barge but were destroyed when they narrowly missed the mark and suffered crash landings. Jason-3, an worldwide mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will help continue U.S.-European satellite measurements of global ocean height changes.
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.
The exact launch time was 10:42:18.386 a.m. PST, or 1:42:18.386 p.m. EST – “the targeted bulls-eye”, according to NASA Launch Commentator George Diller.
Currently, components of a rocket are discarded after launch, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and precious technology.
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The cost of the mission, including five years of operation, was put at $180 million.
