Support leg gives way as rocket lands on ocean barge

“After a successful SpaceX Falcon 9 launch and ascent including two burns by the rocket’s second stage engine, the Jason-3 spacecraft has separated and is flying free”, said Michael Curie of NASA in an email.

Even though an ocean landing is more hard, SpaceX said it needed to flawless the technique so it could bring back its rockets in all kinds of situations.

The goal of the mission was to launch the Jason-3 satellite into an orbit inclined 66 grades relative to the equator, at a distance of 830-mile from the Earth’s ground.

“Jason-3 is a prime example of how our nation leverages NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration to help address critical global challenges in collaboration with NOAA and our worldwide partners”, said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. If successful, the Jason 3 satellite will continue more than two decades of sea level measurements.

“More than 90 per cent of all the heat being trapped in the Earth’s system … is actually going into the ocean”, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Jason-3 lead scientist Laury Miller said.

The Space Exploration Technologies Corp. booster maneuvered back to its destination as intended, but then touched down harder than planned amid 10- to 15-foot swells and broke one of its landing legs.

Operated by the USNOAA, NASA, the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), Jason-3 is created to collect long-term satellite altimetry observations of global sea surface height to measure sea level rise, as well as provide forecasting of hurricanes, surface waves. tides and currents, coastal conditions, and El Niño and La Niña events.

Southern California-based SpaceX successfully launched a weather satellite into space Sunday, but the rocket was damaged after a failed attempt by controllers to successfuly land the missile on a barge 200 miles off the California coast, officials said.

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.

Elon Musk is optimistic about the next attempt. Musk and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire who owns Blue Origin, both hope to revolutionize spaceflight with reusable rockets that would dramatically reduce the costs of missions.

Well, at least the satellite is placed in the orbit.

During a five-year mission, its data will also be used to aid fisheries management and research into human impacts on the world s oceans.