With a total of about 70 missions on its manifest valued at $10 billion, SpaceX has its hands full with speculations and reliability issues.
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The space launch company is one of three major transportation and energy enterprises Musk leads.
SpaceX is a private company run by entrepreneur Elon Musk, also chief executive at Tesla Motors and chairman at SolarCity.
Spacecom has been hit hard in the aftermath of the Thursday explosion that destroyed the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its payload. The explosion, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, will also likely disrupt NASA’s cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. The company’s share price dropped by 34 percent on Sunday before trading was paused. The £213 million ($285 million) deal, which was signed last month, had been contingent on the successful launch of the new satellite.
Meanwhile, Spacecom is on the verge of recovery as they are hoping and looking forward to a fruitful communications with their prospective buyers for other rockets according to its General Counsel Gil Lotan.
“Spacecom will serve all of its current and future financial commitments”, said Pollack.
As such, this week they tried to launch a satellite in the space that will beam Internet access to areas found in sub-Saharan Africa. Both firms are pursuing other options, the companies said in separate statements after the accident.
“To identify the root cause of the [explosion], SpaceX began its investigation immediately after the loss, consistent with accident investigation plans prepared for such a contingency”.
While investigations are underway as to the cause, it is known that the explosion occurred during a pre-launch sequence as the rocket was being fuelled.
The satellite is said to have reached the edge of space aboard a Chinese rocket before suffering some sort of problem and then burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. The program still plans to send the first half of its next-generation weather forecast system – a 12-satellite constellation called the Formosat-7 – into space early next year using another SpaceX rocket, the Falcon Heavy. The launchpad explosion that destroyed the USA private space agency’s Falcon 9 carrying the AMOS 6 satellite is being felt well beyond the Cape Canaveral launch pad in Florida.
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The failure will also delay SpaceX’s own operations.
