The rocket was set to launch on Saturday, September 3, 2016.
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The commercial space office of the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial rocket launches in the United States, has inspectors at the launch site who were overseeing the preflight engine test, and the agency is collecting information about damage to the pad, spokesman Hank Price said. The explosion occurred during a test firing of the Falcon9 rocket some 48-hours prior to its scheduled launch.
SpaceX was founded by Musk in 2002, and the Hawthorne, California-based company began launching its Falcon 9 rockets in June 2010.
Amos- 6 will take up to two years to be launched again but it will surely have a comeback.
The social networking giant had special interest in the Falcon 9, as it was carrying an Israeli-made satellite meant to be used in Facebook’s internet.org programme, bringing connectivity to the continent. The Chinese company in August agreed to buy Spacecom for $285 million, but said the deal depended on the successful launch and operation of Spacecom’s satellite.
What do you think about the explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket and its affect on Space X? NASA is a major customer, relying on SpaceX to send supplies to the space station and return science experiments.
“Today’s SpaceX incident – while not a NASA launch – reminds us that spaceflight is challenging”, NASA tweeted. Per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad. Crew Dragon includes a pad abort system to propel the spacecraft away from the launch pad in the event of an on-pad incident like this.
Elon Musk, a serial investor had fed a large chunk of his fortunes from PayPal into SpaceX, and this setback of $62 million is much more than just financial in nature. Among the commercial satellite operators lined up for SpaceX launches this year are Iridium Communications, SES of Luxembourg, EchoStar and KT Corp. of South Korea.
If the launch pad faces lengthy repairs, SpaceX could opt to use a second Florida site, called 39A, which is located a few miles north at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and was used for space shuttle missions.
In the description to the video, he wrote: It appears that SpaceX may have been shot by a very fast moving drone, or possibly an explosive in the satellite was triggered? Some satellites must go into orbits around the poles, however, and those are launched from the West Coast to avoid populated areas.
SpaceX bounced back quickly after the 2015 explosion.
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As for the Launch Pad itself, our teams are now investigating the status of SLC-40. SpaceX uses Vandenberg to launch satellites requiring polar orbits, while Florida is better situated for satellites heading into equatorial orbits and for cargo ships flying to the International Space Station for NASA.
