Story highlights Soft landing of booster fails, but launch and rest of flight successful

The "Dragon" capsule is heading with supplies to the International Space Station

(CNN) In spite of a successful rocket launch on Saturday, things didn't quite work out as SpaceX had hoped, when it tried to make history with an experiment.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off as scheduled at 4:47 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a routine mission to resupply the International Space Station.

What went up is doing fine. What came down didn't quite, but the the rocket scientists were almost counting on that, and they're not too disappointed.

The company tried to land the first section of the rocket, which is 14 stories tall, back down gingerly and on its feet on Earth, while the rest of the rocket continued on.

A floating landing pad was waiting out in the Atlantic ocean for the booster. It made it there, but came down a little too hard, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in a tweet.

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