SpaceX: Drone Landing Attempt By Falcon 9 Fails For The Third Time

Adding a few more details to the failed landing, Musk writes: “Falcon lands on droneship, but the lockout collet doesn’t latch on one the four legs, causing it to tip over post landing”.

The rocket made the hard landing Sunday after launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Los Angeles, and successfully delivering an ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit.

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

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.

The private space company broadcast the launch live on its YouTube channel, but as the Falcon 9 descended upon the barge floating 200 miles off the California coast, the video feed cut out.

Musk said that once engine 9 was sacked up again, it “showed some thrust fluctuations” that were unanticipated and engineers are now trying to figure out what is causing the issue. 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. He was encouraged by the most recent rocket landing attempt, saying that “at least the pieces were bigger this time!”

The primary goal of the mission was to put the Jason-3 satellite into an 830-mile high orbit inclined 66 degrees relative to the equator. Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that’s also translating & rotating. The attempt, however, ended in a fiery explosion after a broken landing leg led the rocket to topple over.

Still, SpaceX said, it wants to have the options for both at-sea and on-land landings.

NASA partnered with several other organizations on the project, including two European space agencies.

The mission is expected to improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts.

Jason-3 is the latest in a series of satellites that monitor the altitude of the oceans’ surface.

“These measurements provide scientists with critical information about circulation patterns in the ocean and about both global and regional changes in sea level and the climate implications of a warming world”, say NASA officials. “Jason-3 will tell us about the heat of the ocean, vital data if a tropical storm or hurricane is tracking into that location”.