SpaceX launches ocean-measuring satellite to orbit, fails to stick drone ship landing

View from SpaceX livefeed of the launch of the Jason-3 satellite on Jan. 17, 2016.

Image: SpaceX

A new ocean-monitoring satellite is on its way to orbit.

Called Jason-3, the satellite launched to space atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from a foggy Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:42 p.m. ET (10:42 a.m. local time).

Once operational, Jason-3 will keep an eye on the oceans, monitoring currents, wave heights and global sea level. This is the fourth in a series of missions that started in 1992 to collect data on sea levels over time. This data shows that sea level rise has been accelerating over time as the oceans warm and ice sheets melt in response to manmade global warming.
Aside from just getting the satellite to orbit, SpaceX also tried for the fourth time to land the first stage of its rocket back on Earth. The company successfully landed a stage on solid ground in Florida in December 2015, but this time, SpaceX is tried to land the Falcon 9 stage on a drone ship floating in the Pacific Ocean. This was the third such attempt at a landing at sea, this time about 200 miles off the California coast.
The company warned on Sunday that the ship was experiencing high waves, and the live video feed cut out as the rocket stage approached the unoccupied vessel.
Later, SpaceX said the rocket stage made it to the drone ship "on target," but that it was a "harder landing than expected" and one of the landing legs may have broken off.

First stage on target at droneship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg. Primary mission remains nominal → https://t.co/tdni53IviI
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 17, 2016

"Unfortunately we are not standing upright on the drone ship at the moment," a company representative said during the web broadcast of the launch.

Artist's illustration of the Jason-3 satellite.

"The sea state is good for surfing, and a little bit high for landing, but we don't anticipate that that's going to be a major problem," Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, had said at a press conference Friday. "We had a really good landing last time, so things are looking good at this point in time."
SpaceX announced it tested the booster they landed in Florida on Friday in order to see how it fared after its trip to space. The private spaceflight company hopes to one day greatly reduce the cost of access to space by making reusable rockets a reality.
At the moment, rocket stages are discarded into space after one time use, but if companies can reliably bring boosters to Earth and then fly them again, it may bring down the cost of spaceflight by at least an order of magnitude, if not more, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Maybe some debris ingestion. Engine data looks ok. Will borescope tonight. This is one of the outer engines.

Why sea level rise matters

Scientists are interested in learning more about sea level rise in general because it's an "important indicator of climate change happening around the world,” Laury Miller, NOAA’s Jason-3 program scientist, said in a statement.
Global sea level rise has sped up since 1992. Scientists have observed 2.8 inches of global average sea level rise in that time.
“We are already seeing significant impacts on coastal regions globally, including more frequent flooding events along the coastal United States," Miller added.
Jason-3 is a cooperative mission run by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, EUMETSAT (European satellite agency) and the French Space Agency (CNES).
Eventually, Jason-3 will replace Jason-2, which is a still-operational satellite that launched to space in 2008. Having the two satellites overlap is crucial for scientists, since they can compare the two sources of data to ensure the new satellite is providing accurate readings.