The company’s customers have reiterated support for SpaceX as they wait for all the details on what went wrong, with NASA rightly pointing out that SpaceX has already flown six successful missions for the space agency.
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The cause of the accident was not immediately known.
Following a nominal lift-off, Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown, according to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. He offered more detail in a later tweet: “There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank”.
Fortunately all that was aboard the cargo ship was two virtual reality headsets which would have allowed the crew aboard the ISS to make different kinds of observations and share them with us here on Earth. George Diller, the commentator, said that it could be a launch vehicle failure. SpaceX gave initial statements, which stated that all the engines were firing appropriately and the initial take off of Falcon 9 was fine but the cause of what happened remains unknown.
Attached to the Dragon capsule and armed with over 4,000 pounds of supplies, the rocket was destined for the worldwide Space Station, but was destroyed just minutes after being launched.
The launch failure is being classified as a mishap by the FAA. SpaceX will conduct an investigation overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Having three [failures] this close together is not what we had hoped for”, worldwide Space Station program manager Mike Suffrendi told Florida Today.
The explosion of the rocket and capsule occurred about 2 minutes, 30 seconds into the flight. A Russian Progress cargo ship failed to reach the outpost in April following a problem with its Soyuz launcher. The rocket was carrying supplies to the worldwide Space Station. The Dragon was loaded up with research equipment as well as supplies for the crew on board the space station – two Russians and one American.
The space station crew is in no immediate trouble because of this latest loss.
NASA noted on its Web site that another resupply craft is set to launch on July 3.
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NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that though they were disappointed by the loss, the astronauts were safe aboard the station and has sufficient supplies for the next several months, the Guardian reported.
