SpaceX Rocket will explode shortly after its launch

by

Update

SpaceX came up empty-handed Monday in its search to find out why a Falcon 9 rocket exploded unmanned minutes after it exploded from NASA’s launch pad with a load of astronauts.

“Cause still unknown after several thousand hours of engineering-review,” CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter early Monday. He said experts were now focusing on the final seaboard of the flight to determine cause.

MIAMI – An unmanned SpaceX rocket exploded less than three minutes after takeoff from Cape Canaveral, Fla., On Sunday, in the first catastrophe for the fast-charging company by Elco Musk, an internet tycoon.

The crash was the third in less than a year in which U.S. and Russian supply ships entered the International Space Station, and raised new concerns about the flow of food and gear to the astronauts who lived in orbit.

The skies were sunny and clear for the 10:21 am (1421 GMT) launch of the white rocket Falcon 9 which was intended to command a Dragon cargo ship on a routine supply mission, the seventh for SpaceX to date.

But two minutes, 19 seconds into the flight, communication was lost. Live television images from the SpaceX broadcast and NASA television showed a huge puff of smoke stretching out for several seconds, then tiny bits of rocket crashing like confetti against a backdrop of blue skies.

“The vehicle has broken up,” NASA reporter George Diller said.

The SpaceX live webcast of the release was silently released when the rocket exploded.

Minutes later, a SpaceX reporter said the video link from the vehicle was lost.

“There was a kind of anomaly during the first stage flight,” the reporter said, noting that the rocket had ignited out of its nine Merlin engines and reached supersonic speed. .

Later, on Twitter, Musk said the Falcon 9 had a problem “shortly before the first stage was closed,” referring to the level of flight before the cargo ship was able to depart from the first stage of the rocket and reach orbit.

The problem seemed to be related to too much pressure in the melt oxygen tank, Musk wrote.

“Data suggests a counterintuitive cause,” said Musk, a lifelong space enthusiast who is also in charge of Tesla Motors.

“That’s what we can say with confidence right now.”

More details were expected at a NASA press conference scheduled for no earlier than 12:50 pm (1650 GMT).

The loss came as a surprise to many who have followed the Musk company in California through more than a dozen successful launches, even when rival Orbital Sciences lost one of its rockets in an explosion in October, and a Russian supply ship crashed. Loss of progress after construction. in April.

“These things happen, but this was not the best time for this to happen,” said Marco Caceres, a rocket industry analyst with the Teal group.

“The only thing you can count on over the last few years is that the Falcon 9 was going to do and was going to do well,” he told AFP .

“Among this other turmoil in the launch industry was this like, the only stable point and now we don’t have that,” he told AFP.

Caceres said the crash is causing SpaceX, which has a billion-dollar-plus contract with NASA to supply the ISS but is also competing with Boeing to deploy astronauts there by 2017, to relaunch it quickly.

“When they successfully re-launch, this crash will start going into history very quickly. The longer they wait for it to launch again, the more people start talking, ‘Maybe we were too preconceived about SpaceX,’ “he said.

The Dragon cargo ship was transporting 4,000 pounds of gear to the space station, including a large parking space, called an International Docking Adapter, designed to make it easier for a series of crewed spacecraft dock commercial at the orbiting lab in the future.

“It’s very sad to see @SpaceX launch fail. Adverse effects for Space Station restart. Good thing it’s international,” Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wrote on Twitter.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden said the U.S. space agency was “disappointed” by the loss but that “the space station has enough supply for the next few months.”

The Russian Progress supply ship is scheduled to launch July 3, followed in August by a Japanese HTV flight, Bolden said.

“Orbital ATK, our other commercial goods partner, is moving forward with plans for the next release later this year.”

The space station is currently home to three men. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Scott Kelly began their year-long orbit in orbit back in March.

“Unfortunately it failed. It’s a sad place,” Kelly said on Twitter, posting a photo of his view of the Florida coast from space.

Earlier on Sunday, the station’s commander, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, 57, set a new world record when he became the longest-serving official in 804 days.

His career includes one trip to Mir Space Station and four to the ISS.

By Kerry Sheridan

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2015

Source