Watch as SpaceX doesn’t quite manage to land a rocket at sea

Children prepare to take photos of the launch of Falcon 9 rocket near Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the United States, on January 17, 2016.

The failed landing was a setback for the Hawthorne company’s plan to reduce launch costs by reusing rockets rather than having them fall into the ocean.

Jim Silva, Jason-3 program manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said the data collected by the spacecraft on the five-year mission will help support fisheries management and research into human impacts on the world’s oceans.

SpaceX conducted Sunday’s launch, which was made from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, for NASA.

“The measurements from Jason-3 will advance our efforts to understand Earth as an integrated system by increasing our knowledge of sea level changes and the ocean’s roles in climate”. “Jason-3 satellite has been deployed”.

“Touchdown speed was OK, but a leg lockout didn’t latch, so it tipped over after landing”, Musk said in a tweet.

We were reminded of that yesterday when SpaceX tried to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Pacific.

In December, SpaceX successfully returned its upgraded Falcon 9 to flight after an explosion earlier in the year and demonstrated the industry’s first successful rocket landing during a commercial mission. Posting a spectacular video of the landing to Instagram, Musk speculated the root cause may have been ice buildup from condensation created from heavy fog before the rocket launched.

The idea to land the rocket on a platform in the ocean is based on a future perspective to reuse rockets carrying out more demanding tasks when there’s not enough fuel left to reach land.

It said the bid to nail the experimental landing of the first stage on the SpaceX drone ship “Just Read the Instructions”, had been a “secondary test objective”.

Another company official said the botched landing was secondary to the successful launch of the weather satellite. Hopefully the next sea landing will be spot-on.

The launch was a complete success with all first and second stage rocket firings and the Jason-3 deployment occurring precisely as planned and on time.