SpaceX attempting rocket water landing

The private spaceflight company SpaceX has launched a reusable rocket that is supposed to deliver a NASA ocean-monitoring satellite to low-Earth orbit – and then land it on a tiny platform in the Pacific Ocean.

It seems the Falcon 9 rocket returned to the barge and descended exactly as planned, but after landing one of the four landing legs wasn’t able to support the rocket’s weight.

After two failed attempts, SpaceX performed a rocket landing in December.

SpaceX’s two previous attempts to land a rocket on a barge in the Atlantic have failed, though last month the company successfully landed a rocket vertically at Cape Canaveral, Fla., after dropping satellites into orbit.

SpaceX announcers said the Falcon 9 was not upright after reaching the 300-by-170 foot landing pad west of San Diego on Sunday morning. However, Musk later clarified events, explaining the leg had failed to deploy in the seconds prior to landing, meaning that however gentle the touchdown, it was nearly certain to come crashing down.

Chief executive Elon Musk posted video footage of the blast on social media, along with an explanation of what went wrong.

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 US and European rivals. This launch of NASA satellite is not the first satellite to study the world’s oceans in a changing climate instead many satellites have been launched in the past but those have been limited to about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the coast.

The flight mission features the $180-million Jason-3 satellite, a newest member in a series of Earth-observing satellites created to provide worldwide observations of global sea levels.

Jason-3 is created to bounce radio waves off the ocean and time how long it takes the reflected signals to return.

“Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that’s also translating and rotating”.

“Definitely harder to land on a ship”, he added. The satellite – a project of NASA, NOAA, Eumetsat and the French space agency CNES – will monitor changes in sea level from orbit.