The failed attempt has come less than a month after SpaceX made history with vertical landing of a Flacon 9 on land, which is around 6 miles from its launching position at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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Video released by the company’s founder Elon Musk shows the rocket navigating its way to with 1.5m of the target and touching down, but without one of the rocket’s four legs deployed, it then topples over and explodes.
The root cause of the incident could be ice buildup in the rocket due to condensation from heavy fog during liftoff, Musk wrote. That rocket landing followed the successful launch of 11 ORBCOMM communications satellites by the same booster. But more importantly, landing the rockets that shoot satellites into space – instead of letting them fall to pieces back to Earth – means the same rockets can be used over and over again.
Launched over the weekend with the intention of landing on a drone ship, another Falcon 9 failed to complete a controlled landing out to sea.
Within a few minutes after Jason-3 detached itself from the rocket’s second stage, the satellite unfolded its solar arrays.
In the past, rockets were simply dropped into the ocean after use, but recent efforts by the likes of SpaceX and Amazon’s Blue Origin have looked to build reusable rockets, significantly bringing down the cost of space travel.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the U.S.-European Jason-3 satellite launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 4 East on Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016.
Mission scientists emphasized at a prelaunch briefing that it is important to maintain an unbroken record of global sea level variation.
SpaceX stressed that the primary goal of yesterday’s mission was to launch the Jason-3, a NASA and NOAA satellite created to measure the surface of the world’s oceans, into orbit, and that the landing attempt was a secondary goal.
Like its three predecessors, Jason-3 is equipped with radar altimeter to bounce microwave energy off the ocean and a GPS system to identify the satellite’s precise location.
It tipped over after landing, the technology entrepreneur said. “Won’t be last RUD [rapid unplanned destruction], but am optimistic about upcoming ship landing”, tweeted Musk.
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The $180-million mission will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts, including helping NOAA’s National Weather Service and other global weather and environmental forecast agencies more accurately forecast the strength of tropical cyclones.
