Less than a month ago, SpaceX made history when it launched a Falcon 9 rocket up into space and successfully managed to bring the booster back down to earth, landing it safely on a concrete landing pad.
Earlier today, SpaceX was at it again, only this time it was attempting to land a booster on a floating barge – or a ‘droneship’ as SpaceX calls it – in the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, though, things did not exactly go as planned as one of the booster’s landing legs broke upon impact. This marks the third time SpaceX has tried and failed to nail a ocean-based landing.
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In a tweet addressing the failed landing, SpaceX explained:
First stage on target at droneship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg. Primary mission remains nominal
As it stands now, details surrounding the landing attempt are still a bit hazy but we imagine that SpaceX will provide us with more information as soon as they get a handle on what went wrong. Of course, we’ll make sure to update you as soon as more specifics are provided. What we do know, though, is that the waves in the Pacific during the time of the landing attempt were rather choppy, with some reports claiming that they were as high as 15 feet.
Of course, it’s not as if the entire mission was draped in failure as the booster successfully launched the Jason-3 satellite into orbit.
