SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explodes
An unmanned rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX exploded in a fireball moments after launch, a fresh reminder of the perils in flights that the billionaire entrepreneur seeks to transform into routine commercial ventures.
Topped with a Dragon cargo capsule, the Falcon 9 blew up Sunday about 2½ minutes into a mission to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The blast occurred before the first stage was set to separate following takeoff at 10:21 a.m. local time.
“There was overpressure event in the upper-stage liquid-oxygen tank,” Musk said in a Twitter message.
“Data suggests counterintuitive cause. That’s all we can say with confidence right now.”
An eruption of flame and smoke and a shower of debris marked the Falcon 9’s demise as it roared toward orbit through a clear, deep-blue sky. The craft was about 34 kilometres high when the accident occurred, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
It is the second U.S. resupply mission to fail in less than a year, posing a setback for the for-profit flights championed by Musk and NASA. An Antares rocket launched by Orbital ATK Inc. exploded in a fireball over a Virginia launch pad in October, just weeks after NASA’s historic contract award to Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. to help the U.S. resume manned space flight.
“This should prompt a rethink by NASA about its whole approach to the use of commercial launch vehicles,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based research group. “This will definitely bring closer scrutiny of SpaceX and other non-traditional launch providers who have offered cut-rate pricing to get into space.”
Musk said SpaceX would “have more to say following a thorough fault-tree analysis.”
For all the technological improvements in space flight since the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik I satellite in 1957, the dangerous fun- damentals remain the same: Cargo and people heading outside Earth’s atmosphere ride atop a tube of volatile rocket fuel whose ignition must be carefully controlled.
“Our thoughts are with the @SpaceX team,” Orbital said in a Twitter message. “We understand getting to space is hard, but very important work. Wishing you a speedy recovery.”
Any delay in NASA’s use of commercial space flight for lofting astronauts would mean that U.S. personnel would still depend on Russia’s Soyuz rockets to reach the International Space Station. The U.S. hasn’t had its own manned launches since NASA retired the space shuttle in 2011.
“The astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. “We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight.”
SpaceX’s cargo-hauler is the second straight vehicle to fail to deliver goods to the orbiting lab after a Russian spacecraft was destroyed last month. Another Progress capsule laden with supplies is slated to leave July 3 from Kazakhstan.
Sunday’s attempt was the seventh mission for Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX under a US$1.6-billion contract with NASA to resupply the space station. The company’s space-taxi contract is valued at as much as US$2.6 billion.
Last month, SpaceX was certified by the U.S. air force to compete for military launches with United Launch Alliance LLC, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp.
“Very sorry to hear of the #CRS7 loss,” United Launch Alliance chief executive Tory Bruno said in a Twitter message, using the NASA designation for Sunday’s mission. “Heartbreaking for the men and women who worked on the rocket and its mission. Hang in there SX, NASA.”
Musk, 44, founded SpaceX in 2002 with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets. Once considered a long-shot startup, the company has grown to almost 4,000 employees.
The explosion also obscured one of Musk’s goals in commercial flights: holding down costs by guiding the spent booster to a vertical landing on an autonomous barge far in the Atlantic Ocean.
Sunday’s launch was to be the third attempt at such a recovery.