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.<br />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.<br />Jason-3 is designed to track sea-level change for purposes such as improved hurricane forecasting.<br />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.
