SpaceX fails ocean landing of Falcon 9 rocket

The booster jettisoned from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, which continued into orbit with the Jason 3 oceanography satellite for US and European science institutions, then flipped around and slowed down before reaching the landing platform.

Landing at sea offers a greater margin of safety for high-speed rockets travelling deeper into space, when the chance of missing the landing pad is greater. 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.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted a video of the landing attempt on Instagram.

While giving reasons behind the fallout of Falcon 9 during landing, SpaceX owner Elon Musk said a simple mechanical failure might cause the accident, reports Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, the rocket was unable to stick the landing. Shortly after liftoff, SpaceX tried to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship in the ocean, with a landing zone of 150 feet (45.7 meters) by 250 feet (76.2 meters).

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.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket shot into the fog right on time at 10: 42 a.m. PST (1842 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California, sending the Jason-3 ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit, Xinhua reported.

Private company SpaceX has previously managed to land a rocket upright in Cape Canaveral, Florida, bringing space tourism closer than ever.

The satellite equipped with a radar altimeter to measure changes in sea level by as little as 1.3 inches (3.3 centimeters) will help track effects on the ocean such as climate change or human-induced changes.

The mission is planned to last at least three years, with a goal of five years.

But he adds the ship landings are necessary for “high velocity missions”. SpaceX’s next launch is another satellite, this time for communications firm SES, scheduled to blast off in February. Only one out of four attempts in the past year have been successful.