Elon Musk’s SpaceX lifted an ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit in a mission Sunday that also will include another attempt to land the Falcon 9 rocket’s booster stage on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at about 10:42 a.m. local time carrying the Jason-3 satellite, a project led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and including NASA and two European partners.
Jason-3 is designed to track sea-level change for purposes such as improved hurricane forecasting.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is trying to make history minutes after today’s liftoff by flying the spent booster from the edge of space to a vertical landing on a ship in the Pacific.