SpaceX does not yet have USA government’s permission to land a rocket at the Vandenberg Air Force Base from where it took off.
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Indeed, like Musk said, the residual pieces of the crash are bigger this time compared to the first two similar landing attempts previous year, which ended in a giant explosion and lots of small rocket pieces scattered across the ship’s deck and nearby seafloor.
Musk appeared positive in his tweet after the troubled landing, saying it was not like rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD).
It said the bid to nail the experimental landing of the first stage on the SpaceX drone ship “Just Read the Instructions”, had been a “secondary test objective”.
The U.S. space agency NASA then confirmed the Jason-3 satellite “ready for science operations!” The officials at the Hawthorne-based company revealed that they witnessed a “hard landing” and one of its stabilizer arms broke and it was not possible for the rocket to stand upright.
Speaking at a press conference at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, SpaceX vice president of mission assurance Hans Koenigsmann told Space News that a test-firing of the landed rocket “went very well”.
SpaceX will use the Jason-3 launch to again try to land a Falcon 9 first stage on an oceangoing barge, with the second stage and satellite continuing toward orbit.
Despite a successful launch of a satellite into orbit on January 17, 2016, Elon Musk-owned SpaceX experienced a failed attempt to land their rocket stage on a drone ship.
Last month, SpaceX’s mission was successful and the rocket was able to return to a landing pad in Florida and perform an ocean platform touchdown. On Sunday, the private space agency opted for an ocean landing attempt. As Musk said, however, this won’t be the last drone ship landing attempt we’ll see. The satellite’s mission is to continue an unbroken record of more than two decades of sea level measurements from orbit.
Jason-3 will measure the shape of the global sea surface to an accuracy of better than 4cm.
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The mishap marks the third such landing failure at sea since the privately funded company began space launches in 2008. 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.
