SpaceX Rocket Explodes On Barge After Failed Landing

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has blasted off from California and successfully put a climate-monitoring satellite into orbit, but botched an attempted return landing on a platform at sea, officials say.

Falcon 9 successfully launched the NASA/NOAA/European Jason-3 sea level rise reconnaissance satellite on Sunday morning, January 17 at 10:42:18 a.m. PST (1:42:18 EST) from Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC 4) on Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in California, which was the primary goal of the mission.

Elon believes the leg lockout may have failed because of ice buildup created by heavy condensation during the foggy liftoff, Christian Science Monitor added.

Last month, SpaceX made a successful, first-of-its-kind return of a used booster that hurtled back from space and made a pinpoint touchdown on land without incurring any significant damage.

Central to this massive project is to touch down the Falcon 9 on a drone ship and there are two reasons for this: a mid-ocean landing is more flexible and cheaper. Sea landings can be tricky as the portable platform moves around in the water, but landing on land requires not only somewhere safe to land but also the proper permissions to use that landing site at that time.

Not long afterwards, Musk took to Twitter to humorously explain where things went wrong. While SpaceX has another rocket landing attempt to learn from, backers were also able to celebrate the successful deployment of the Jason-3 satellite.

After sending the Jason-3 satellite into orbit the Falcon 9 rocket will attempt to land its discarded first stage on a floating barge in the Pacific Ocean.

But putting bureaucratic obstacles aside, Musk did reaffirm that there are some essential goals of a ship landing. This time, the company tried for another landing at sea. And last April, the rocket landed too hard and didn’t make it. SpaceX can align the heading and velocity of a barge with the course of the rocket to conserve precious fuel.

The joint U.S.-European weather satellite will precisely measure ocean levels as they creep upward, a result of global warming.