SpaceX’s upcoming commercial launches have been placed in doubt after its Falcon 9 rocket blew up just minutes after taking off to resupply the International Space Station.
CEO Elon Musk pointed to an “overpressure event in the upper stage liquid…
SpaceX’s upcoming commercial launches have been placed in doubt after its Falcon 9 rocket blew up just minutes after taking off to resupply the International Space Station.
CEO Elon Musk pointed to an “overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank” in a tweet soon after the explosion, although he added that the data suggested a “counterintuitive cause”.
Gwynne Shotwell, the launcher’s president and COO, was cited telling reporters that an investigation into the failure would likely take “a number of months or so”.
Satellite operators on the group’s near term manifest included Israel’s Spacecom and Luxembourg-based SES, which partnered with SpaceX for its first launch to geostationary transfer orbit in late 2013 with SES-8. Both operators declined to comment.
It is Falcon 9’s first complete loss but the third time a cargo run has failed to reach the ISS in eight months.
Orbital Sciences (now part of Orbital ATK), the other private company under NASA’s commercial resupply programme, suffered an explosion soon after its Antares rocket took off in October 2014.
In April this year, a Progress resupply spacecraft never made it to the station after an anomaly occurred during its separation from the Soyuz rocket carrying it.
Despite this string of failures, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said the astronauts aboard ISS have sufficient supplies for the next several months.
Another Progress vehicle is set to launch on 3 July, followed by a Japanese HTV flight in August, and then an upgraded Antares later in the year.
“The commercial cargo programme was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles,” Bolden said.
Other operators awaiting launches this year on SpaceX’s increasingly crowded manifest include Eutelsat, ABS, Iridium and Sky Perfect JSAT.
Back in 2012, an anomaly on one of Falcon 9’s first stage engines saw it place its secondary payload to the wrong orbit on its way to the ISS.
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule went on to complete its resupply mission successfully, however, M2M specialist Orbcomm later filed an insurance claim for the total loss of its OG2 prototype satellite.
Meanwhile, work is continuing to return Russian’s workhorse Proton rocket to flight, after its failure in May 2015 caused the loss of the Mexican government’s Centenario satellite.
