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WATCH: SpaceX Rocket Explodes In Attempt To Land On A Barge

Members of the media setup remote cameras for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch with the Jason-3 spacecraft onboard at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Saturday.
Bill Ingalls
/
AP
Members of the media setup remote cameras for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch with the Jason-3 spacecraft onboard at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Saturday.

Space is hard.

We were reminded of that yesterday when SpaceX tried to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Pacific.

If you remember, SpaceX made history when another Falcon 9 successfully launched a satellite into orbit and then navigated back down to Earth, landing safely on solid ground.

SpaceX had tried once before to land a rocket on a platform in the ocean but that failed pretty spectacularly.

On Sunday, the Falcon 9 delivered a satellite into orbit and it came super close to sticking the landing on water. Here's video:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explained what happened and added a bit of humor:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: January 18, 2016 at 10:00 PM MST
An earlier version of this post said that SpaceX had tried to land a rocket on a platform in the ocean once before. In fact, this was SpaceX's third attempt.
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.