SpaceX fails in third attempt to stick landing on its drone barge

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has posted dramatic vision of the failed ocean landing of his company’s Falcon 9 rocket to his Instagram account.

An unmanned US rocket placed a $180 million climate-monitoring satellite into orbit Sunday, but then failed in an attempt to return to a platform floating in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

The Falcon 9’s first stage, which stands 14 stories tall and measures 12 feet (3.7 meters) in diameter, flew on course to the drone ship Sunday after liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Hans Koenigsmann, president of mission assurance at SpaceX, said this time the company chose to land the rocket on the ocean because they do not have the “environmental approval” to attempt a landing on solid ground in the area.

NASA says the U.S.-European Jason-3 satellite is in orbit and “ready for science operations”.

The January 17 launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was through heavy fog at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Jason-3 will float around 830 miles above the planet, tracking the rate of global sea-level rise, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Another company official said the botched landing was secondary to the successful launch of the weather satellite. A third attempt last April saw the rocket land too hard to survive the impact.

“Definitely harder to land on a ship”, he added.

The company’s two previous ocean-landing attempts in 2015 were also unsuccessful. A photo Musk later tweeted of the damaged rocket laying on its side on the ship.

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

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.

The Falcon 9 project is part of SpaceX’s ambition to create a reusable rocket system to take space travel into a new era of affordability and efficiency.

The first attempted boat landing was nearly exactly a year ago, and ended with the rocket stage striking the barge at an angle and exploding.

SpaceX has tried several times a year ago to land its rocket booster on a drone ship in the ocean, but all without success.