The joint U.S.-European weather satellite will precisely measure ocean levels as they creep upward, a result of global warming.
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SpaceX failed to land its Falcon 9 rocket at sea for the third time Sunday afternoon after it carried a satellite into low orbit. It broke a landing leg on contact with the landing platform.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said drone ship landings are needed for “high velocity missions”, which would allow payloads, such as satellites, to reach a higher orbit.
SpaceX had hoped to build on last month’s stunningly successful rocket return to a landing pad in Florida with an ocean platform touchdown, part of Musk’s ongoing quest to develop cheap, reusable rockets. However, an unscathed landing at sea has eluded SpaceX once again. No further details were immediately available.
Liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Los Angeles, occurred as planned at 10:42 a.m. PST Sunday under mostly cloudy skies. Despite the recent failure, Musk is taking it all in stride and joked that at least this time the “pieces were bigger” referring to the fact that the two previous ocean landing attempts ended with the rockets exploding. “The measurements from Jason-3 will advance our efforts to understand the Earth as a system and the causes of sea level rise”.
An ocean-monitoring satellite that launched from the California coast has separated from its SpaceX rocket and been sent toward orbit.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets are equipped with four landing legs that deploy seconds before touch down and are what keep the rocket stable and upright after landing.
The unmanned mission, which launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, had two goals.
Jason-3 is the fourth mission in a series geared toward measuring ocean surface height.
Currently, expensive rocket components are jettisoned into the ocean after launch, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars. But SpaceX has wanted to flawless the landing-at-sea technique, despite the vast technical challenges of trying to slow a rocket traveling roughly 5,000 miles per hour and land it on a platform bobbing in the Pacific Ocean.
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“Jason-3 will continue the legacy of the Topex/Poseidon and earlier Jason satellites by gathering environmental intelligence from the world’s oceans”, said Stephen Volz, Ph.D., assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, which is leading the worldwide mission.
