SpaceX completes primary mission but fails to land rocket on ship

In further good news for the company, analysis of the Falcon 9 from the 21 December landing provides strong evidence for the future reusability of SpaceX’s rockets. After touching the floating landing pad, one of its landing legs broke and made the rocket stumble onto the surface of the drone ship.

Currently, expensive rocket components are jettisoned into the ocean after launch, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars. It crashed due to a lack of hyraulic fluid, Musk said.

Although the launch and satellite deployment came off without a hitch, this was SpaceX’s third failed landing of the rocket stage at sea. But he adds the ship landings are necessary for “high velocity missions”.

“I’m pretty hopeful, ” SpaceX Vice President of Mission Assurance Hans Koenigsmann said during the press conference before the launch, according to Gizmodo.

The SpaceX CEO explained that the Falcon 9 rocket actually managed to land on the droneship, but one of the four legs did not engage properly on the landing, which cause it to fall over. The company attempted to achieve the same landing twice previous year, but failed to retrieve the rocket.

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

The launch of the satellite is a partnership between several worldwide agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the French space agency CNES, and the European Organization for Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.

The rocket successfully delivered the Jason-3 satellite into orbit after launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base, north west of Los Angeles.

“Jason-3 will continue the legacy of the Topex/Poseidon and earlier Jason satellites by gathering environmental intelligence from the world’s oceans”, Stephen Volz, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, said in the release. Despite foggy weather, the launch was nearly flawless and NASA’S Jason-3 satellite, which weights 1,124 pounds and is about 3.3-feet across, was successfully placed in the low-earth orbit.

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