SpaceX Launches Satellite but Fails to Land Reusable Rocket

According to a message on Twitter wrote by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, one of the rocket’s landing legs didn’t latch into place on the landing platform and flipped over.

“After a successful SpaceX Falcon 9 launch and ascent including two burns by the rocket’s second stage engine, the Jason-3 spacecraft has separated and is flying free”, said Michael Curie of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in an e-mail.

SpaceX has launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Jason 3 satellite to the orbit.

Musk tweeted further that he wants SpaceX to flawless ocean landings because they “are need(ed) for high velocity missions”. The mission is meant to improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts, US space agency NASA said.

The U.S. based private company headed by Elon Musk plans to re-use the landed rockets in hopes of making spaceflight cheaper.

SpaceX said it lost contact with its live video link of the floating barge, or droneship, before the rocket came in for a landing, so no images were immediately available.

“Definitely harder to land on a ship”, tweeted Musk after the latest foible.

SpaceX’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket broke apart Sunday as it tried to land on a floating platform in the Pacific, marking the fourth such failure in the company’s bid to recycle rockets.

Meanwhile, NASA said Jason-3 was “ready for science operations” after it reached orbit and had its solar arrays deployed.

About 20 minutes later, SpaceX reported that the Falcon 9 had a “hard landing” and “one of the landing legs may have broken”. The launch after that, a supply mission to the International Space Station scheduled no earlier than March 20, will likewise require a sea-based landing because of the supply-laden Dragon cargo ship being delivered. This launch of NASA satellite is not the first satellite to study the world’s oceans in a changing climate instead many satellites have been launched in the past but those have been limited to about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the coast.

Space X’s troubled rocket program has suffered another setback after a rocket exploded spectacularly upon landing after successfully sending a satellite into orbit. The rocket stage was landing within 1.3 meters of droneship center.