“During a standard pre-launch static fire test for the AMOS-6 mission, there was an anomaly at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 resulting in loss of the vehicle”.
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The large blast, subsequently followed by smaller explosions over several minutes, was caught on radar and shook buildings several miles away, according to the Associated Press. Dark smoke could be seen hanging in the sky over the blast site.
SpaceX says “an anomaly on the pad” caused the explosion, which destroyed both the rocket and its payload.
According to numerous reports, there has been an explosion at the SpaceX launch pad on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The company suffered a serious setback previous year when an unmanned Falcon 9 rocket, carrying food and supplies to the International Space Station under a NASA contract, exploded a couple minutes into flight.
This explosion surely came as a shock to SpaceX employees, as the Falcon 9 launch would’ve been the company’s ninth launch of the year.
The explosion is a major blow for SpaceX – and also for NASA, which relies on the company to keep the space station equipped with food, science experiments and other supplies. Refresh this page for updates.
Two NASA astronauts were conducting a spacewalk 250 miles up, outside the International Space Station, when the explosion occurred.
Explosions destroyed a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its entire cargo during a test launch Thursday morning in Cape Canaveral, FL. “Per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad and there were no injuries”, the company announced.
Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of slashing launch costs to make travel to Mars affordable. The last such flight took place in July.
Response teams at the base were working to confirm if there were any injuries, said Brian Purtell, the public information officer for the 45th Space Wings.
Thursday’s incident marks a blemish on SpaceX’s record, which had been clean since another Falcon 9 was lost during a launch in June of past year. The company also is working on a crew capsule to ferry station USA astronauts. We also don’t know whether the accident was caused by the rocket, or the launch pad infrastructure. SpaceX had been expected to receive flight readiness certification from NASA for those manned flights by late 2017.
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Whether or not this will affect the launch of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx on September 8 is also unknown. “But at the end of the day, I’m confident that our commercial space industry will be very successful”.
