The 208-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket built by Space Exploration Technologies lifted off at 10.21am. “After liftoff, the launch vehicle failed”, NASA announced. The company had hoped to land the first-stage booster on an ocean platform, off the north Florida coast, in a test of rocket reusability.
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Gwynne Shotwell, President of SpaceX, said in a press conference that the company will investigate the explosion of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket minutely and they will do everything they need to do to correct it.
In the immediate aftermath Musk said “there was an overpressure event in the upper-stage liquid oxygen tank” suggesting a “counterintuitive cause”. The unmanned spacecraft, which had been carrying supplies to the global Space Station, was destroyed less than three-minutes after taking off.
The rocket was carrying more than 4,000 pounds of payload.
A SpaceX rocket exploded only minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral on Sunday in the third incident involving a resupply mission within a year.
“We would be remiss to underestimate the gravity of the situation right now”, Nelson said today, noting, however, that SpaceX has made seven previous successful flights to the ISS for NASA. “The commercial cargo program was created to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles”, Mr. Bolden added.
“They supply the station with all these contingencies in mind”, Stephanie Schierholz, a NASA spokeswoman said in an interview with Washington Post.
This is the second failed station shipment this year.
Part of the Falcon 9 rocket is the Dragon cargo ship that contains and provisions that are supposed to be delivered to the ISS. 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.
A Russian Progress vehicle is ready to launch July 3, followed in August by a Japanese HTV flight.
However, Nasa’s second cargo transporter, run by Orbital ATK, remains grounded following a launch accident in October.
The SpaceX shuttle was the third unsuccessful cargo mission in eight months under NASA’s watch. According to SpaceX, mission control did get telemetry from the Dragon capsule after the explosion, indicating it was still intact.
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Bolden said this was a reminder that spaceflight was an incredible challenge, “but we learn from each success and each setback.”
