SpaceX Successfully Launches Jason-3 Satellite, Rocket Landing Partial Success (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket today carrying the Jason-3 ocean monitoring satellite. "Jason-3 data will be used for monitoring global sea level rise, researching human impacts on oceans, aiding prediction of hurricane intensity, and operational marine navigation," NASA said. Unfortunately Space X reports that the attempt to land the Falcon 9 on a drone platform was only a partial success. According to the company twitter page: "First stage on target at droneship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg." Update: 01/18 04:16 GMT by S : Here's a brief video of the landing attempt (somewhat loud).

Comments

Re:Actual update!

[ColdWetDog]

The booster is strong in only one direction - the longitudinal one. If you try to catch it with cables, it goes on it's sides which are just thin walled aluminum, Like a giant beer can. It's a matter of weight. Tradeoffs.