{"id":15266,"date":"2016-09-01T21:39:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T13:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-rocket-and-israeli-satellite-destroyed-in-launch-pad-explosion\/"},"modified":"2016-09-01T21:39:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T13:39:52","slug":"spacex-rocket-and-israeli-satellite-destroyed-in-launch-pad-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-rocket-and-israeli-satellite-destroyed-in-launch-pad-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX rocket and Israeli satellite destroyed in launch pad explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated with quotes and 45th Space Wing release.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: US Launch Report<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded in the final minutes of a simulated countdown at Cape Canaveral on Thursday, destroying the booster and an Israeli communications satellite valued at nearly $200 million.<\/p>\n

The mishap on Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad Thursday will raise questions about the reliability of the Falcon 9 booster, which is slated to haul up cargo to the International Space Station, launch dozens of commercial satellites, and eventually send astronauts into orbit.<\/p>\n

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher exploded at 9:07 a.m. EDT (1307 GMT), a few minutes before a planned ignition of the rocket\u2019s nine Merlin main engines for a brief \u201cstatic fire\u201d test designed to wring out problems with the launch pad and the vehicle.<\/p>\n

Watch a video of the explosion captured a few miles from the launch pad by U.S. Launch Report.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 was scheduled to blast off early Saturday with the Amos 6 satellite, a nearly 6-ton commercial television and Internet broadcast platform owned by Spacecom Ltd. of Israel.<\/p>\n

The mishap destroyed the rocket and the Amos 6 satellite, SpaceX said in a statement. The launch pad was cleared of all personnel for the static fire test, and no injuries were reported.<\/p>\n

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk tweeted that the Falcon 9 rocket anomaly occurred as RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants were pumped aboard the launcher. He wrote that the problem apparently \u201coriginated around (the) upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Images captured in the aftermath of the explosion showed black smoke and flames billowing from the launch pad, and damage to the metal strongback tower that feeds electricity, purge air and propellants into the rocket. Nearby structures, such as the launch pad\u2019s rocket integration hangar and four lightning towers, appeared intact.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are continuing to review the data to identify the root cause,\u201d SpaceX said in a statement. \u201cAdditional updates will be provided as they become available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s launch was supposed to be the 29th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket. Another SpaceX launcher disintegrated about two minutes after a liftoff in June 2015 with a Dragon supply ship heading for the space station, but the company had logged nine successful flights in a row since resuming launch operations in December.<\/p>\n

A component inside the Falcon 9\u2019s upper stage liquid oxygen tank was the source of last year\u2019s in-flight rocket failure, according to SpaceX. Officials blamed the failure on a sub-standard strut holding one of the tank\u2019s high-pressure helium reservoirs inside the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.<\/p>\n

There were no other reports of damage at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station or Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for liftoff Sept. 8 with NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a $1 billion mission to travel to an asteroid and return a sample to Earth. Initial assessments show the robotic science probe and its launcher are healthy and secure inside the Vertical Integration Facility near the Atlas 5 pad about 1.1 miles north of the SpaceX launch facility, NASA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDays like today are difficult for many reasons,\u201d said Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, commander of the U.S. Air Force\u2019s 45th Space Wing, which oversees Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. \u201cThere was the potential for things to be a lot worse; however, due to our processes and procedures no one was injured as a result of this incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud of our team and how we managed today\u2019s response and our goal moving forward will be to assist and provide support wherever needed,\u201d Monteith said in a statement. \u201cSpace is inherently dangerous and because of that, the Air Force is always ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Thursday\u2019s incident, SpaceX had around nine launches left to execute before the end of this year, according to statements from the company\u2019s numerous customers about their intentions. Next up after the Amos 6 launch was the first of seven Iridium satellite deployment flights Sept. 19 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with 10 spacecraft for the company\u2019s next-generation voice and data relay network.<\/p>\n

In late October, SpaceX planned to fly a recycled Falcon 9 first stage for the first time with the SES 10 communications satellite to provide coverage over Latin America. SpaceX and SES announced the first-of-its-kind reusable launch agreement earlier this week, after recovering six of its last nine rocket boosters with propulsive rocket-assisted landings.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s next space station cargo mission was on track for liftoff in November with several tons of supplies and experiments, including an externally-mounted package of U.S. Air Force research investigations and a multimillion-dollar NASA instrument to study Earth\u2019s ozone layer.<\/p>\n

Other missions that were on SpaceX\u2019s manifest later this year included missions for Inmarsat, EchoStar, South Korea\u2019s KTsat, another flight for SES, a tandem launch for Taiwan\u2019s National Space Organization and Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, and the second batch of 10 Iridium satellites.<\/p>\n

The impact of Thursday\u2019s explosion on SpaceX\u2019s upcoming missions was not clear, but with an investigation underway and the company\u2019s main launch pad damaged, some delays are all but certain.<\/p>\n

\"This
This view of Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad from the roof of NASA\u2019s Vehicle Assembly Building shows the facility soon after the Falcon 9 rocket exploded. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kirk Shireman, NASA\u2019s International Space Station program manager, spoke with Spaceflight Now Thursday morning shortly after the Falcon 9 rocket and the Amos 6 satellite were destroyed on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

The space station program is SpaceX\u2019s biggest customer, with three separate multibillion-dollar contracts to ferry supplies to and from the orbiting research complex, and eventually transport astronauts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have reached out to SpaceX and offered our assistance,\u201d Shireman told Spaceflight Now in a previously scheduled interview at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. \u201cWe have people and resources there at KSC and across the country. They are understandably very busy, so that\u2019s all. I just reached out and said we have resources. We\u2019re at your disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX has launched nine commercial resupply missions to the space station with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule. Eight of those flights reached the outpost, and one failed during the launch in June 2015.<\/p>\n

The next cargo mission by SpaceX was slated for liftoff Nov. 11, but that date could be in jeopardy after Thursday\u2019s launch pad mishap in Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe carry margin on orbit in terms of crew supplies, critical spares and science to allow for these kinds of things,\u201d Shireman said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a critical situation for us on orbit. Who knows what, if any, disruption there will be to the supply chain as a result of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using a fleet of SpaceX Dragon, Orbital ATK Cygnus, and Russian Progress logistics freighters, officials spent the last year-and-a-half restocking the space station with provisions and science gear after three launch failures in 2014 and 2015.<\/p>\n

In October 2014, an Orbital ATK Antares launcher crashed moments after blastoff from Virginia, destroying a Cygnus cargo craft heading for the space station. A Russian Progress supply ship spun out of control shortly after reaching orbit atop a Soyuz rocket in April 2015, then a Falcon 9 booster disintegrated in mid-air in June 2015 about two minutes after liftoff with a Dragon cargo carrier.<\/p>\n

The trio of mission failures never endangered the space station\u2019s crew \u2014 they always have a reserve of food and critical supplies \u2014 but it diminished the stockpiles managers send to the complex just in case of such problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actively track and plan for logistics on-board ISS, and by logistics I mean not only food and water for the crew, but we\u2019re also talking critical spares for equipment that has to work, like oxygen generation, carbon dioxide removal, the toilet, all those things that really have to work,\u201d Shireman said. \u201cWe also track logistics for science. We track what our science program is, and we carry reserve science as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of spares on orbit, critical spares for hardware, I would say we\u2019re close\u201d to reconstituting the reserves lost last year, he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not quite recovered. In terms of food, water and science, yes. Our No. 1 priority was, of course, we want to keep the crew healthy, but it was really also science. And then it was building back up the spare posture we\u2019d like to have on orbit, and we\u2019re close to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s other space station cargo provider, Orbital ATK, is in the final stages of preparing an upgraded Antares rocket for its first flight since the October 2014 mishap. Orbital ATK replaced the Russian-made AJ26 engines blamed for that failure with two new RD-181 powerplants, and engineers have spent the last couple of months wrangling with technical issues to ensure the RD-181s are ready.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Orbital ATK ordered two Atlas 5 rockets from ULA for a pair of Cygnus resupply flights in December and March, ensuring the station\u2019s supply chain remained largely intact while the Antares and Falcon 9 launchers were grounded and returning to flight status.<\/p>\n

Those two missions were successful, and now attention turns to the resumption of Antares launches from Wallops Island, Virginia.<\/p>\n

Shireman said NASA is treating the re-engined Antares booster \u2014 dubbed the Antares 230 \u2014 like a \u201cbrand new rocket\u201d and will avoid placing one-of-a-kind high-priority items aboard the mission, which is currently slated for late September. If SpaceX\u2019s launch schedule slips \u2014 as widely expected \u2014 the Antares flight needs to go well to ensure NASA has unfettered access to the space station for cargo deliveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntares 230 is about to fly for the very first time, so I don\u2019t think our supply chain is really back to normal,\u201d Shireman said. \u201cWe are looking forward to Antares flying quickly, and at that point we would feel comfortable. We\u2019d feel that our supply chain is where we expected it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Japanese HTV cargo mission is scheduled for launch around December to deliver more equipment to the space station, including six new lithium-ion batteries for the research lab\u2019s huge power truss.<\/p>\n

A Russian Progress refueling and resupply capsule is due for launch Oct. 20.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur supply chain, fortunately, has dissimilar redundancy,\u201d Shireman said. \u201cToday, we have HTV, we have SpaceX, we have Orbital ATK\u2019s Cygnus, we have Russian Energia Progress vehicles, and then we have a little cargo we can fly up on Soyuz, too. All those things allow us to carry cargo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you lose one of those capabilities, even temporarily, yes, it\u2019s an impact,\u201d he said Thursday morning. \u201cWhat specific impacts there will be is hard to say. If it\u2019s a disruption, we\u2019ll manage it. We\u2019re very good at anticipating what things could happen and positioning ourselves to be tolerant to those things, and then recovering from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have Cygnus and HTV coming up. We have Progresses and even Soyuz,\u201d Shireman said. \u201cThere are plenty of opportunities for us to carry up cargo to the ISS.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"File
File photo of the Amos 6 satellite during ground testing. Credit: Spacecom Ltd.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rocket launches are risky, and failures occur regularly, but catastrophic explosions on the ground like Thursday\u2019s launch pad blast are very rare.<\/p>\n

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who keeps a respected catalog of space activities, said he believes the last time such a mishap occurred at Cape Canaveral on an orbital-class rocket before liftoff was in 1959, when an Atlas-Able booster exploded during a static fire test.<\/p>\n

More recently, a Brazilian VLS satellite launcher exploded on its launch pad in 2003 when one of its solid rocket boosters inadvertently ignited, killing 21 people. That was the last time an orbital-class rocket was lost in a mishap on the launch pad before liftoff.<\/p>\n

The Amos 6 satellite fastened on top of the Falcon 9 rocket during Thursday\u2019s doomed test was fully fueled with several tons of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants for orbital maneuvers. Built by Israel Aerospace Industries, the satellite was about to set off on a 16-year mission to broadcast direct-to-home television across Europe and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Spacecom signed a $195 million contract with IAI for the Amos 6 satellite in 2012, and the new craft was supposed to replace the aging Amos 2 launched on a Soyuz rocket in 2003.<\/p>\n

Opher Doron, general manager of IAI\u2019s space division, said in an interview before Thursday\u2019s mishap that the Amos 6 spacecraft weighed nearly 11,600 pounds \u2014 5,250 kilograms \u2014 with a full tank of propellant, making it the largest and heaviest satellite ever produced in Israel.<\/p>\n

Eutelsat and Facebook leased a portion of Amos 6\u2019s communications payload to provide broadband Internet access across sub-Saharan Africa, part of an initiative by the social media company to connect the developing world.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019m here in Africa, I\u2019m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX\u2019s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent,\u201d wrote Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook\u2019s founder and CEO, in a post to his social media site Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well,\u201d Zuckerberg wrote, referring to a solar-powered high-altitude drone developed to beam Internet signals down to Earth. \u201cWe remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spacecom has not confirmed whether the spacecraft was fully insured for a total loss before liftoff.<\/p>\n

Two industry sources familiar with space insurance arrangements for Falcon 9 launches said standard satellite insurance policies should likely cover risks to the spacecraft during SpaceX\u2019s static fire test.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has always conducted a customary \u201cstatic fire\u201d test before each launch, using it as a rehearsal for the launch team and as a way to verify the rocket and ground systems are ready. In 2014, SpaceX started regularly executing the static fire tests with the rocket\u2019s payload on-board, first with Dragon cargo capsules heading to the space station, then with commercial satellites.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated with quotes and 45th Space Wing release. Credit: US Launch Report A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded in the final minutes of a simulated countdown at Cape Canaveral on Thursday, destroying the booster and an Israeli communications satellite valued at nearly $200 million. The mishap on Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad Thursday will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3143,1736,1424,3611,479,1672,3612,3212],"class_list":["post-15266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amos-6","tag-complex-40","tag-eutelsat","tag-facebook","tag-falcon-9","tag-israel","tag-israel-aircraft-industries","tag-spacecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}