Falcon 9 rocket explodes after launch
Minutes after a SpaceX rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Sunday it disintegrated and burst into flames, destroying 5,200 pounds of supplies, research and hardware for the International Space Station.
Falcon 9 and its cargo, a Dragon resupply space capsule, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Sunday at 10:21 a.m. At 139 seconds into its flight, NASA video showed a white cloud emitting from the rocket before flames appeared and debris fell from the sky.
The rocket was about 27 miles high and traveling at 2,900 mph when the failure occurred.
This marks the third space station resupply mission lost within a year from three different launch providers. In April, a Russian cargo ship spun out of control and burned up upon re-entry, along with all its contents. Last October, an Orbital Sciences Corp. supply ship was destroyed in a launch accident.
“We expect losses in commercial flight,” said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate. “I just didn’t think we would lose them all in a year time frame.”
The rocket experienced an over-pressurization event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter account.
“Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown,” Musk tweeted. “Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.”
The SpaceX CRS-7 resupply flight was loaded with experiments for the astronauts to perform during ISS Expeditions 44 and 45, including about 30 student experiments. Some supplies were replacements from the Orbital launch in October that exploded seconds after liftoff.
International
Space
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Manager Mike Suffredini stressed that the International Space Station crew still have four months of supplies and are in good shape. NASA would not plan to return the astronauts to Earth unless they were down to 45 days of supplies. The agency would like to have the crew with up to 6 months of supplies by the end of the year.
Also lost in the mission was one of two new International Docking Adapters. The docking adapter will be used for future commercial crew missions. Other supplies being sent to the ISS aboard the Dragon vessel included food and clothing.
Students who rebuilt their projects after the Orbital loss in October will have to start again, and Suffredini said they will work with the students who lost experiments on CRS-7.
“We’ll help them get back online and we’ll get them to orbit and we’ll do their experiments,” said Suffredini.
Recovery vehicles have been sent out to the estimated landing location to bring back anything crews can find to examine. The investigation will focus on the second stage of Falcon 9, according to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell.
“There is nothing
that
stands
out
for
this particular flight that we’ve done for other flights,” Shotwell said in a press conference.
Shotwell said the first stage of the rocket seemed to work well. The company had hoped to land the discarded booster on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Shotwell said there was no indication a breakup signal was sent from mission control when the rocket exploded.
SpaceX plans to use Dragon to carry astronauts to the Space Station from the U.S. by December 2017. Shotwell assured reporters if humans had been onboard the Dragon capsule it is designed handle a much larger impact and itwould have carried them to safety.
This is the first major failure for the Falcon 9 rocket in 19 launches. Sunday would have been the seventh SpaceX resupply launch to the International Space Station under its contract with NASA.
The next Space Station resupply mission is scheduled for July 3 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
Information from The Associated Press and The Los Angeles Times was used in this report.