A SpaceX Falcon 9 was launched out of Vandenberg today, putting an ocean observation satellite into orbit. A secondary goal was to land the first stage on a barge out at sea… it appears that this was not successful. The rocket landed on the barge but didn’t stick the landing; it seems one of the legs may have collapsed due to hitting too hard. Ocean conditions were pretty rough, as can be seen in the video below… which cut off literally seconds before the landing at about 50:30.
So… from a limited dataset, the Falcon 9 is good at landing on pads that aren’t bobbing up and down, not so good at landing on pads that are in motion. Even if this issue isn’t resolved, it’s still useful on many missions to be able to land-recover the first stage.
So, presuming the booster was lost on landing, what we have here is a learning experience. If it was NASA… program shutdown, months of Congressional hearings. SpaceX: “don’t launch when it’s cold.” Or to be more specific, don’t expect to land when the seas are rough.