Watch SpaceX’s rocket explode after coming painfully close to nailing its landing

Yesterday’s landing attempt by the Falcon 9 rocket was nearly successful, the rocket actually landed on the droneship, unfortunately it fell over and then exploded, this can be seen in the video below.

The first stage of the rocket made it back to the platform, but one of the rocket’s legs failed to latch into position, subsequently breaking upon landing. Last month, however, the company did successfully land an orbital booster at a terra firma landing site. The satellite that was launched into space, named Jason-3, will measure ocean levels on the Earth’s surface.

It found the target, but one of the rocket’s landing legs didn’t latch into place and the rocket tipped over, SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on Twitter. Having achieved the touchdown on land at the end of 2015, the team is confident of reaching its ultimate goal.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket approaches floating drone ship, seconds before tipping over in a spectacular crash.

The January 17 launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was through heavy fog at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Elon Musk’s company first tested the ability of the Falcon 9 to land on a barge a year ago, but the 14-story rocket ran out of hydraulic fluid before it hit the ship and broke into pieces.

The mission is meant to improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts, USA space agency NASA said.

NASA partnered with several other organizations on the project, including two European space agencies.

Mission scientists emphasized at a prelaunch briefing that it was important to maintain a continuous record of global sea level variation.

“Jason-3 will continue the legacy of the Topex/Poseidon and earlier Jason satellites by gathering environmental intelligence from the world’s oceans”, Stephen Volz, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, said in the release. Its successor, Jason-1, operated from 2001 until it was decommissioned in 2013.

Currently, expensive rocket components are jettisoned into the ocean after launch, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.

“After further data review, stage landed softly but leg 3 didn’t lockout”.