SpaceX rocket blows up after liftoff
Print Edition
An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida yesterday, following what was meant to be a routine cargo mission to the International Space Station.
“The vehicle has broken up,” said NASA commentator George Diller, after NASA television broadcast images of the white rocket falling to pieces.
“At this point it is not clear to the launch team exactly what happened,” he said.
The disaster was the first of its kind for the California-based company headed by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has led a series of successful launches even as competitor Orbital Sciences lost one of its rockets in an explosion in October, and a Russian supply ships was lost in April.
SpaceX’s webcast of the launch went silent about two minutes 19 seconds into the flight, and soon after the rocket could be seen exploding and small pieces tumbling back toward Earth.
Moments later, a SpaceX commentator said the video link from the vehicle had been lost.
“There was some kind of anomaly during first stage flight,” he said, adding that the rocket had ignited its nine Merlin engines and reached supersonic speed.
“However, it appears something did occur during first stage operations,” he said, referring to the stage of rocket flight before the cargo ship would have been able to separate from the first stage of the rocket and reach orbit.
The Dragon cargo ship was carrying 1,800 kilograms of gear to the space station, including a large parking space, known as an International Docking Adaptor, designed to make it easier for an array of commercial crew spacecraft to dock at the lab in the future.
The capsule blasted off at 1421 GMT. Countdown was normal and the weather was clear.
After liftoff, SpaceX had planned to make a third try at a controlled, upright landing of its Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean platform with the goal of one day making rockets as reusable as planes. But the explosion happened before the first and second stages of the rocket separated.
Three men are now living at the space station, including Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Scott Kelly who began a yearlong mission in March.
The station commander, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, arrived with them but is only staying for six months.
Padalka, 57, set a new world record yesterday, when he became the person who has officially spent the longest amount of cumulative time in space -- 804 days.
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