Rocket Explodes Minutes After Take Off

On Sunday, an unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying supplies and the first-of-its-kind docking port to the global Space Station broke apart shortly after liftoff.

“There is a capability to take supplies up to the worldwide Space Station with the European Space Agency”, Redfern said. SpaceX still struggles to find the cause of the explosion.

SpaceX said that it is reviewing “every frame of video” and that its teams are putting together detailed timelines to determine exactly what happened. “There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank”, Musk said.

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. Telemetry indicates first stage flight was nominal and that Dragon remained healthy for some period of time following separation, according to SpaceX officials.

A SpaceX rocket launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral disintegrated in the sky minutes after takeoff.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) described it as a “mishap”.

ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on Air Force launches until SpaceX came along and contended that it could launch the military’s satellites for less than the Air Force pays ULA.

SpaceX has been working to develop a way to recover and reuse rockets following a launch, something that would significantly reduce the cost of space travel.

The countdown had proceeded without worries about weather, and the 208-foot-tall rocket lifted off at 10:21 a.m. EDT.

Whatever that loss turns out to be will pale in comparison to the business that SpaceX will lose if the company cannot show that it can get over this setback and resume the future launches it was contracted for. The crew have consumables stored that should last them through October. More cargo missions are planned, including Russian flights on July 3 and July 22.

“The astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months”.

“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.