SpaceX rocket landing goes wrong again as Falcon 9 tips and explodes

SpaceX’s third attempt to land one of its rockets on an autonomous landing pad barge at sea on Sunday did not go as hoped once again.

“First stage on target at droneship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg”, the California-based company said on Twitter.

The space company is attempting to land the rockets, making them reusable, to reduce the cost of space travel.

The worldwide mission Jason-3 is led by the NOAA partnering with the U.S. space agency NASA, CNES (the French Space Agency) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.

The rocket launched as planned at 10:42 a.m. from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Los Angeles, streaking through a cloud-filled sky before eventually sending its second stage and a Jason-3 satellite into orbit. Jason-3, an worldwide mission with NASA participation, will continue a 23-year record of monitoring global sea level rise.

In December, SpaceX landed a similar rocket on land near Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking the first time a rocket launched into orbit successfully made a controlled landing on earth. In a video Musk released on Instagram, the rocket comes in straight, practically in the centre of the barge, with all four landing legs deployed. It appears the landing would have been successful had the part not malfunctioned, as the rocket landed within a few yards of the droneship’s center. Initial announcements suggested that the autonomous drone ship experienced hard landing.

Musk then tweeted a photo of the wreckage, adding that “at least the pieces (of the rocket) were bigger this time” The company is the first to attempt such a landing. SpaceX will launch a series of ocean science satellites used to monitor climate change and tsunamis, predict severe weather events and track oil spills.

Musk has said drone ship landings are needed for “high velocity missions”, which would allow payloads such as satellites to reach a higher orbit. “Jason-3 will tell us about the heat of the ocean, vital data if a tropical storm or hurricane is tracking into that location”.

But SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, had the secondary goal of sticking the landing on the drone ship.