This morning in Cape Canaveral, Florida, an unmanned SpaceX rocket exploded within three minutes of the launch. The SpaceX rocket exploded on its way to bring supplies to the International Space Station. Over the past year, three missions met with disaster on their way to the ISS.
This was the first disaster that involved a SpaceX rocket. Orbital Sciences lost a rocket headed to the ISS in October, 2014, while a Russian Progress supply ship met with disaster in April of this year.
Just over two minutes after the rocket launch, contact with the SpaceX rocket was lost. A large amount of smoke, followed by rocket debris raining from the sky, were the next sights that people saw in Florida.
Elon Musk , the founder of SpaceX, commented on Twitter about the rocket explosion.
Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015
There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015
That’s all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015
The Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX has been one of the most reliable rockets in the industry. Rocket industry analyst Marco Caceres commented on today’s explosion and the SpaceX rocket.
“These things do happen, but this was not the best time for this to happen. The one thing you could count on over the past few years was that the Falcon 9 was going to perform and was going to perform well. In the midst of all this other chaos in the launch industry this was like, the one stable point and now we don’t have that.”
SpaceX will be feeling pressure to launch a successful rocket in the near future. NASA entered into a contract with SpaceX for resupplying the International Space Station. The contract is worth over $1 billion.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made comments on the failed mission this afternoon during a press conference.
“We are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight. The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles.”
SpaceNews reported that the astronauts aboard the International Space Station would run out of food by September 5, 2015.
Were you surprised to hear that the SpaceX rocket exploded?
[Image via the New York Times ]