Rocket booster aiming for barge in redo of SpaceX test

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.

A space weather satellite is poised to blast off today for a destination 1 million miles away, but it’s the rocket’s ocean landing that is stealing the spotlight.

The SpaceX company will take a second stab at landing a booster on a platform floating off the Florida coast; last month’s experiment ended in a fireball.

The “close, but no cigar” attempt Jan. 10 was caused by an insufficient amount of hydraulic fluid. SpaceX added extra fluid for today’s attempt. But the booster will fly back faster this time given its particular course, and officials are less certain of success in this attempt to demonstrate rocket reusability.

“On one side, we fixed the problem; on the other side, this trajectory is a lot more aggressive and a lot more difficult,” SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann said Saturday. He stressed that the test is secondary and entirely separate from the primary mission of launching the Deep Space Climate Observatory for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

Excellent weather is forecast for the 6:10 p.m. launch.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory is the revitalized version of the Earth-observing spacecraft conceived in the late 1990s by then Vice President Al Gore. It was called Triana, after the sailor who first spotted land on Christopher Columbus’ famed voyage.

The Triana program was suspended, and the spacecraft put in storage in 2001.