After coping with a wayward boat, unfavorable winds and propellant problems, SpaceX launched the SES-9 telecommunication satellite on its Falcon 9 rocket today, then tried unsuccessfully to land the rocket’s first stage on an oceangoing platform.

The Falcon 9 soared into the skies above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida just after sunset at 6:35 p.m. ET (3:35 p.m. PT) after a smooth countdown. The satellite was sent on its way to geosynchronous transfer orbit, the first step toward putting SES-9 into position for Luxembourg-based SES to deliver satellite broadcast services to millions of customers in the Asia-Pacific region.

Two earlier launch attempts – on Feb. 24 and 25 – had to be scrubbed due to concerns about the super-cold liquid oxygen propellant that was loaded into the Falcon’s tanks.

Another attempt, on Feb. 28, was delayed when a tugboat strayed into a restricted zone downrange from the launch site. Eventually the countdown resumed, but the launch was aborted just as the engines were being fired up because the liquid oxygen’s temperature had risen too high.

SpaceX reset the countdown for Tuesday, but the upper winds were so strong this week that the Falcon 9 wasn’t even fueled up again until today. This time, the winds stayed within acceptable levels.

Several minutes after liftoff, the Falcon’s second stage and its satellite payload separated from the first-stage booster. The booster’s guidance then restarted its engines and made a controlled descent toward an “autonomous spaceport drone ship,” stationed in the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles off the Florida coast.

A webcam feed from the uncrewed ship showed a brightening glow as the booster descended toward the deck, but the video was cut off before it could be determined whether or not the landing was successful.

More than an hour after launch, SpaceX founder Elon Musk delivered the bad news about a hard landing, plus a forward-looking twist:

SpaceX tried to make such an at-sea landing three times before, in January and April of 2015 as well as this January. Each time, the landing came close to success, but the rocket didn’t survive.

In December, SpaceX successfully brought a Falcon 9 booster back to its Cape Canaveral landing zone after a launch, but the company wants to perfect the at-sea landing routine for situations in which an on-land touchdown is not logistically possible.

Because of the higher-than-usual propellant requirements for the SES satellite launch to a geosynchronous transfer orbit, SpaceX said long before the launch that the landing was not likely to be successful. But it wanted to try anyway. Rocket recovery and reuse are key steps in Musk’s plan to reduce the cost of access to space and eventually make it possible to send colonists to Mars.

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled to send an uncrewed Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station in April.

GeekWire

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