NASA Warns of Falling Debris After SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Failure

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft exploded just minutes after launch. Elon Musk said on Sunday on Twitter that there was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.

NASA’s spokesperson, George Diller, said, “We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure”.

“I think this points out the challenges and difficulties we face in spaceflight”, said Nasa’s associate administrator for human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier.

The headsets, being sent to the space station, were part of an association between Microsoft and NASA to have astronauts make use of commercial technology on their missions. SpaceX’s President Gwynne Shotwell shortly issued a statement to reporters shortly after the accident assuring the company is working hard to find the problem, fix it “and get back to flight”.

Including its station cargo runs for Nasa, SpaceX has a backlog of almost 50 missions, worth more than $7bn, including dozens of commercial communications satellites. The SpaceX manufactured, Falcon 9 rocket, was 208-foot-tall.

The incident marks the third loss of an ISS resupply vehicle in about eight months.

In addition SpaceX had two launches planned for later this year, which now will be subject to review.

The next cargo resupply mission to the space station is slated for July 3 where a Russian Progress spacecraft will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

SpaceX, which has already flown six official resupply missions for NASA, is slated to begin carrying astronauts to the space station in 2017.