NASA Launch Commentator George Diller gave the first indication to the public that a self-destruct command had been sent by the Eastern Range safety officers. However, Suffrendi insists the incident will have only a limited impact on the worldwide Space Station crew. But shortly afterwards, video showed the rocket exploded over Florida.
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the rocket encountered a problem shortly before the first stage shut down, also known as main engine cutoff.
NASA says the station has enough supplies to last until October.
The engineering detective work kicks in after all the information is saved, including more than 3,000 channels of data radioed from the rocket.
Despite ideal launch conditions and multiple successful missions under their belt, SpaceX experienced a fateful glitch in their recent unmanned cargo delivery to the worldwide Space Station (ISS).
The future of space travel and supplying astronauts at the worldwide Space Station was brought up Monday when U.S. Senator Bill Nelson met with representatives from SpaceX and NASA at Cape Canaveral.
William Gerstenmaier, a senior official at Nasa headquarters, emphasised that no negligence had occurred, and such incidents made them understand the failure and move forward. “The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles”, he said, according to The Washington Post. “However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months”, he said in a statement.
This is the second failed station shipment this year. What’s less fortunate is that the capsule was also meant to carry a lot of goods from the ISS on its way back to Earth.
However, Nasa’s second cargo transporter, run by Orbital ATK, remains grounded following a launch accident in October.
SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the cause, which so far has only been attributed to a failure in the rocket’s upper stage.
Astronaut Scott Kelly, who is working on the space station now, was quick to comment on the accident, which he watched from the orbiter.
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The explosion took place only two minutes in flight without an obvious cause just as the spacecraft was about to separate from its first stage.
