SpaceX fails to stick ocean landing after satellite launch

But as you can see from the Instagram video below – posted by SpaceX founder Elon Musk – the rocket then tipped and crashed.

The Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered its payload – an oceanographic satellite named Jason-3 – into orbit, before attempting to land on a barge called “Just Read the Instructions” just off the Florida coast.

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. Nailing the landing is huge for SpaceX and space travel as a whole because Musk has previously said he believes reusing rockets – which cost as much as a commercial airplane – could reduce the cost of access to space by a factor of one hundred.

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.

SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, is NASA’s launch service provider of the Falcon 9 rocket. The five-year mission of the satellite will be to study more precisely the global warming and sea level rises are affecting wind speeds and currents, up to as close to the shore as about a half-mile.

This undated artist rendering provided by NASA shows the Jason-3 satellite. “Was within 1.3 meters of droneship center”, SpaceX confirmed later.

The Falcon 9 rocket with Jason-3 bolted atop was rolled out from a processing hangar at Vandenberg AFB to the SLC 4 launch pad on Friday, Jan. 15 after it passed the Launch Readiness Review.

The rocket made it back to the floating ocean platform yesterday in the Pacific, and it did land upright. In reference to previous failed landings, Musk remarked: “at least the pieces were bigger this time!”

Falcon 9 first stage attempts soft landing on droneship barge in the Atlantic Ocean in April 2015.

Booster rockets have typically been left to tumble back to Earth after launch, leaving them broken up by the intense heat of re-entering the atmosphere.