kmhouseindia: SpaceX successfully delivers US-European ocean-monitoring satellite Jason-3 into orbit but fails ocean landing Monday January 18,2016

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

SpaceX successfully delivers US-European ocean-monitoring satellite Jason-3 into orbit but fails ocean landing Monday January 18,2016

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen as it launches with the Jason-3 spacecraft onboard, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 4 East in California. Jason-3, an international mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will help continue U.S.-European satellite measurements of global ocean height changes. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)) Photo: Bill Ingalls, AP / (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
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After successfully delivering a US-European ocean-monitoring satellite Jason-3 into orbit, a SpaceX rocket made a hard landing on a floating barge in the roiling Pacific, breaking a support leg and toppling over.

This undated artist rendering provided by NASA shows the Jason-3 satellite. The latest in a series of U.S.-European satellites designed to detect ocean events like El Nino is scheduled for launch Sunday, Jan. 17, from California. If successful, the Jason 3 satellite will continue more than two decades of sea level measurements. (NASA via AP) Photo: AP / NASA

SpaceX announcers said the first stage of the Falcon 9 was not upright after reaching the 300-by-170 foot landing pad in choppy seas about 320 km (200 miles) West of San Diego on Sunday.

The rocket launched as planned at 10.42 am from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Northwest of Los Angeles, streaking through a cloud-filled sky before eventually sending its second stage and a Jason-3 satellite into orbit.

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The failed landing was a setback for the Hawthorne, California, company’s plan to reduce launch costs by reusing rockets rather than having them fall into the ocean. Meteorologists predicted swells of 10- to 13-feet where the barge waited for the landing attempt.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on Twitter that the rocket’s speed at touchdown was OK, “but a leg lockout didn’t latch, so it tipped over after landing.”

Two previous attempts to land a rocket on a barge in the Atlantic failed, but last month SpaceX succeeded in returning a rocket to a vertical landing at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after putting a cluster of satellites into orbit.

NASA said Jason-3 was “ready for science operations” after it reached orbit and had its solar arrays deployed. The satellite’s mission is to continue an unbroken record of more than two decades of sea level measurements from orbit. As the current El Nino in the eastern Pacific has strengthened, Jason-3 had been stuck on the ground.

Jason-3 will ultimately replace Jason-2, which has been in orbit since mid-2008 and has been tracking the current El Nino that experts say has tied the 1997-98 version as the strongest recorded and is expected to last through the winter before weakening in spring.