And how long will it be before America can once again safely launch astronauts into space?
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And last October, a cargo spacecraft developed by Orbital Sciences destined for the ISS exploded just after the company was awarded a $1.9 billion contract with NASA.
NASA officials said that they plan to send three more crewmembers up next month. “We lost a lot of research equipment on this flight”.
But if another 10 launches of Falcon 9 proceed without incident, that will bring the failure rate to 3.5 per cent, which could be acceptable, he says.
SpaceX will be competing for Pentagon satellite launches against the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), breaking a monopoly the two have had since 2006. Data stopped flowing from the Falcon 9 rocket around 2 minutes and 19 seconds, he said.
But SpaceX doesn’t know yet what caused it. “Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown”, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted, “There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank”. Pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic Ocean. Recovery teams were dispatched to attempt to collect debris for analysis. Two previous landing attempts by SpaceX have failed.
SpaceX and the Air Force reached an agreement in January to complete the certification process, which culminated in last month’s announcement that the company was now eligible to join ULA as one of two certified launch providers for US national security missions.
The station is expected to be returned to its full, six-member crew in July. Japan is slated to fly its HTV capsule to the station in August.
SpaceX made worldwide headlines over the weekend when its unmanned rocket broke apart in the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida just a few minutes after liftoff. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield speculated that the failure might have started at the front of the craft-near the second stage engine and the Dragon capsule.
“It is not clear what happened”, NASA said initially.
According to a report, the rocket had passed “Max-Q”, this is known as the moment of maximum aerodynamic force, when ground controllers lost contact with the booster.
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The recent failures should be recognized as the cost of making progress in spaceflight. It is the first company to complete a return trip to the space station, a feat previously achieved by only governments.
