Unfortunately merely two minutes after liftoff the Falcon 9 rocket exploded in mid-air, fortunately though it was an unmanned mission so there was no loss of life. Also aboard the doomed spacecraft were a water filtration system and a docking adapter for the space station to prepare for the future commercial missions.
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The rocket malfunction is the third failure to bring supplies to the ISS in the past year, following the crash of a Russian rocket in April and a launch accident of another rocket in October. Except it’s not over in an hour. “Will provide more info as soon as we review the data”. In engineering-speak it’s called a fault tree analysis.
“After what looked initially looked like the first-stage separation, everything disappeared, it was clear what happened. “. Officials were hopeful this flight might be the one to finally get it right.
He said investigation was ongoing because SpaceX doesn’t know yet what caused it. Orbital is buying new engines for the rocket and expects to return to flight next year. It never made it, breaking apart seconds after launching. Its nine engines fired well.
Titled “pad abort”, the system uses eight “Super Draco” rocket engines to quickly move the crewed capsule away from the disaster site.
According to Elon Musk, head of the Space Exploration Technology Corporation, or SpaceX, via Twitter, “There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank”.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s disastrous explosion of a SpaceX shuttle slated to carry supplies to the worldwide Space Station, Sen.
Shotwell said Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators were already working at the site of the ill-fated launch.
Bolden’s statement tells, “We are dissatisfied in the beating of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the global Space Station”. The launch was supposed to deliver NOAA’s Jason-3 Earth observation satellite and was scheduled for August 9th.
The station is expected to be back to six crew members in July.
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