The Vandenberg site is mainly used for rockets that launch into polar orbit – a path that takes satellites over the Earth’s poles, according to SpaceX.
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SpaceX said there were no injuries as a result of the explosion, which it described as an “anomaly”. It is routine for companies to test fire their rockets before launches.
The company’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket has successfully delivered cargo to the International Space Station.
SpaceX, meanwhile, now still has plans to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, though its planned late-2017 launch date may be delayed after today’s news. The loss is a major setback for NASA’s plans for future cargo hauls and, ultimately, astronaut flights.
A SpaceX rocket exploded Thursday morning on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Yet another SpaceX rocket exploded today while fueling up for a test-fire on the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
People in buildings several kilometres from the facility wrote on social media that they felt the blast, and live television images showed thick black smoke coming from the site. No other details were immediately available.
In a statement, SpaceX said the explosion came “in preparation for” the test fire, and that the rocket’s payload, a commercial satellite, was also lost.
“We are collecting information about the extent of the damage to the pad”, the spokesman, Hank Price, said.
Traditionally, the second phrase is understood to mean that launches must be able to occur from both the Cape and from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the west coast. EOD airmen are trained to detect, dispose and render safe any possible explosive threats while environmental health personnel monitor the air quality to ensure it is safe for emergency responders and the general public.
That launch, carrying the SES-8 communications satellite into supersynchronous transfer orbit, reportedly cost SES “well under US$60 million” to launch – a discount it received in return for volunteering as Falcon 9’s first paying commercial customer. SpaceX is one of two companies shipping supplies to the space station for NASA. It is also working on a crew capsule to ferry station USA astronauts; that first flight was supposed to come as early as next year.
Two NASA astronauts were conducting a spacewalk 250 miles up, outside the International Space Station, when the explosion occurred. Mission Control did not notify them of the accident, saying all communication was focused on the spacewalk.
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At this point, we don’t know whether the explosion stemmed from any sort of negligence on the part of SpaceX or anyone else, or whether it was simply the kind of thing that inevitably happens in the spaceflight business, because the spaceflight business is exceedingly hard.
