The breakup of an unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying supplies and a first-of-its-kind docking port to the International Space Station Sunday morning was a reminder that such missions present "incredible" challenges, NASA officials said as they worked to determine a cause behind the failure.
It was a severe blow to the space agency, still reeling from previous failed shipments. The rocket appeared to break apart while traveling at 2,900 mph, about 27 miles up.
In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said astronauts aboard the station have enough supplies for several months, but characterized the failed mission as a significant setback to the space station resupply program.
"We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight," Bolden said. "The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles. We will continue operation of the station in a safe and effective way as we continue to use it as our test bed for preparing for longer duration missions farther into the solar system."
The failed mission marked a "tough day" for SpaceX, which employs about 3,000 people to work on the Dragon 9 rocket at its Hawthorne, California headquarters, and NASA, NASA's top spaceflight official, William Gerstenmaier, said during a Sunday news conference.
https://instagram.com/p/4efr5wqgtvHe said there was nothing common among the three accidents, "other than it's space and it's difficult to go fly." Sunday's event occurred about 2 1/2 minutes into the flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 5,200 pounds of space station cargo were on board, including the first docking port designed for future commercial crew capsules.
"The vehicle has broken up," announced NASA commentator George Diller. He said it was not clear how the disaster occurred or even when the rocket actually failed. Data stopped flowing from the Falcon 9 rocket around 2 minutes and 19 seconds, he said. No astronauts were on board.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose 44th birthday is Sunday, said "an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank" led to the breakup. Everything appeared to go well in flight until the rocket went supersonic.
"That's all we can say with confidence right now," Musk tweeted. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis."
Losing this shipment -- which included replacements for items lost in two previous failed supply flights -- was a huge setback for NASA in more than one way. The space agency is counting on private industry to transport cargo -- and eventually astronauts -- to the orbiting lab. SpaceX is one of the contenders.
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Previous SpaceX supply runs, dating back to 2012, had gone exceedingly well. This is the second failed station shipment in a row and the third in eight months.
“SpaceX has demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in its first six cargo resupply missions to the station, and we know they can replicate that success," Bolden said. "We will work with and support SpaceX to assess what happened, understand the specifics of the failure and correct it to move forward. This is a reminder that spaceflight is an incredible challenge, but we learn from each success and each setback. Today's launch attempt will not deter us from our ambitious human spaceflight program.”
In April, a Russian cargo ship spun out of control and burned up upon re-entry, along with all its precious contents. And last October, another company's supply ship was destroyed in a launch accident.
This Dragon had been carrying replacement food, clothes and science experiments for items lost in those two mishaps.
The three space station residents were watching the launch live from orbit.
"Sadly failed," space station astronaut Scott Kelly said via Twitter. "Space is hard."
The space station crew is in no immediate trouble because of this latest loss. Late last week, NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, said the outpost had enough supplies on board to make it to October or so.
Russia expects to take another crack at launching supplies on Friday from Kazakhstan.
SpaceX -- led by billionaire Musk, who also heads up electric car maker Tesla -- is one of two companies hired by NASA to start ferrying American astronauts to the space station as early as 2017. The other contender is Boeing.
The company had hoped to land the first-stage booster on an ocean platform, off the north Florida coast, in a test of rocket reusability. Previous efforts had failed. Launch spectators lining the beaches near Cape Canaveral were confused, at first, by the unexpected plumes in the sky.
"It looked fine until it was almost out of sight. And then, a poof of smoke," said Whitney Jackson of Palm Beach, Florida, watching with her family. "Everyone was cheering and clapping. No one knew it meant failure."
