Photo: SpaceX
After a historical, successful landing at Cape Canaveral last month, SpaceX wanted to perfect the landing-at-sea technique, but unfortunately, all tests ended in failure. The latest one saw the Falcon 9 launching the Jason-3 satellite into orbit and then breaking a landing leg while touching down on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.
“Touchdown speed was OK, but a leg lockout didn’t latch, so it tipped over after landing,” Musk tweeted on Sunday.
Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying the satellite, a project led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and two European partners. Jason-3 will track sea-level changes for purposes such as improved hurricane forecasting.
“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,” stated Michael Curie of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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. A second attempt was scheduled for February 2015 but was then called off because of oceanic conditions. The third test saw the rocket land too hard to survive the impact.
Despite the immense technical challenges of trying to slow a rocket traveling at 5,000 miles per hour and land it on a platform in the Pacific Ocean, if SpaceX manages to accomplish this goal, it would give the company more options for staging low-cost space flights.
In May 2015, SpaceX was certified by the Air Force to compete for military launches with United Launch Alliance LLC, a project created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Last week, SpaceX won a contract to haul cargo to the International Space Station, as Bloomberg reports.
Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying the satellite, a project led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and two European partners. Jason-3 will track sea-level changes for purposes such as improved hurricane forecasting.
“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,” stated Michael Curie of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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. A second attempt was scheduled for February 2015 but was then called off because of oceanic conditions. The third test saw the rocket land too hard to survive the impact.
Despite the immense technical challenges of trying to slow a rocket traveling at 5,000 miles per hour and land it on a platform in the Pacific Ocean, if SpaceX manages to accomplish this goal, it would give the company more options for staging low-cost space flights.
In May 2015, SpaceX was certified by the Air Force to compete for military launches with United Launch Alliance LLC, a project created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Last week, SpaceX won a contract to haul cargo to the International Space Station, as Bloomberg reports.
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