STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with more than 4,000 pounds of supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station \u2014 including a critical docking adapter needed by future U.S. crew ships \u2014 broke apart in a shower of debris shortly after launch Sunday in a major setback for NASA and the California rocket company.<\/p>\n<p>In a spectacular mishap, the rocket, the 19th Falcon 9 launched by SpaceX since 2010, disintegrated in a sudden cloud of swirling vapor followed moments later by arcing contrails as debris fell toward the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>The last data from the spacecraft was received just under two-and-a-half minutes into flight, around the time the booster\u2019s nine first stage engines were to have shut down. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who turned 44 Sunday, said in a tweet that telemetry indicated a sudden change in the pressure of the second stage liquid oxygen tank just before the rocket came apart.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank,\u201d he tweeted. \u201cData suggests counterintuitive cause. \u2026 That\u2019s all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX President and CEO Gwynne Shotwell expanded slightly during a post-launch news conference, saying the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage operated normally throughout the brief flight and \u201cwe do not expect this to have been a first stage issue. We saw some pressurization indications in the second stage, which we\u2019ll be tracking down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She would not speculate on the possible root cause, saying SpaceX will be carrying out a detailed failure investigation, with FAA participation, to find out what went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to speculate as to what it\u2019s going to take to get back to flight because we haven\u2019t pinpointed exactly what happened yet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>But given that SpaceX builds virtually all of the rocket\u2019s critical systems and has thousands of channels of telemetry to review, \u201cI\u2019m sure we\u2019ll find it rapidly,\u201d she added, \u201cand we\u2019ll get back to flight as soon as we safely and reliably can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LxqZOb68mrA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe dramatic failure came eight months after an Oct. 28 explosion that destroyed a space station cargo craft build by Orbital Sciences Corp. and two months after a Russian cargo ship spun out of control moments after reaching orbit April 28.<\/p>\n<p>While NASA anticipated failures when it awarded commercial resupply contracts to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, no one expected three in less than one year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a tough day,\u201d said William Gerstenmaier, director of space operations at NASA Headquarters. \u201cThis is not where I really wanted to be on a Sunday afternoon. But spaceflight is not easy, and I think this points out the challenges we face. We started with the Orbital loss last fall, had the Progress loss several months ago and now this SpaceX loss.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a blow to us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe lost a lot of important research equipment on this flight, we lost the docking adapter, we lost a spacesuit and we lost a lot of research.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even so, he said, \u201cfrom a macro-level standpoint, the crew\u2019s in no danger. We\u2019re moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Russians say they have found and fixed a problem with the Soyuz upper stage and another Progress is scheduled for launch July 3, followed by launch of a Soyuz ferry craft July 23 carrying three fresh crew members to the outpost. A Japanese cargo ship is scheduled for launch in August and later this year, Orbital plans to launch a Cygnus cargo ship atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket before resuming use of its own Antares rocket next spring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe expected through the commercial cargo program we would lose some vehicles,\u201d Gerstenmaier said. \u201cI didn\u2019t think we\u2019d lose them all in a one year time frame, but we have. There\u2019s no negligence here, there\u2019s no, really, problem with (the commercial cargo program), it just shows the challenges of spaceflight in general.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe teams will work through this, we\u2019ll learn from these events, and I think we\u2019ll get stronger from these events.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That said, the back-to-back Progress and Dragon cargo failures will have a significant impact on NASA and its space station partners, preventing the agency from building up projected reserves of food, clothing and other consumables in the wake of the previous two failures.<\/p>\n<p>More important, the first of two International Docking Adapters, or IDAs, was on board as part of a major station reconfiguration to ready the lab for arrival of U.S.-built crew ships starting in 2017. A second IDA is scheduled for launch aboard a Dragon capsule in December, but the SpaceX launch schedule will almost certainly face a major revision in the wake of Sunday\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n<p>In the near term, both of NASA\u2019s U.S. space station resupply contractors \u2014 SpaceX and Orbital Sciences \u2014 are out of action, leaving only the Russian Progress and Japanese HTV freighter to carry up supplies and equipment.<\/p>\n<p>Space station program manager Mike Suffredini said the station had enough on-board supplies to make it through October even if no other cargo ships show up. But the failure Sunday will require extensive contingency planning and it\u2019s not yet clear how that might play out.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, the failure could impact science operations depending on how long it takes SpaceX to resolve the problem. The Dragon is the only spacecraft currently in operation that can bring cargo and research samples back to Earth for laboratory analysis.<\/p>\n<p>Shotwell said the company will leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of the failure and resolve it as soon as possible. In the meantime, SpaceX will stay the course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t anticipate this to impact any program that we have ongoing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe must find the cause of the failure, we must fix it, and obviously we\u2019re going to get back to flight. It\u2019s a reminder, it\u2019s not a great reminder, but it\u2019s a reminder nonetheless of how difficult this is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis doesn\u2019t change our plans,\u201d she added. \u201cOur customers have always been loyal, we let them see how we operate, they\u2019re very confident in our technical team and our operations team. So it\u2019s a hiccup, it\u2019s certainly time to pause and make sure we\u2019re doing everything we need to do. But no, I don\u2019t anticipate any significant changes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX aggressively markets its Falcon 9 boosters for commercial and military payloads, challenging the dominance of United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n<p>The company had chalked up 18 successful Falcon 9 launches in a row since the rocket\u2019s debut in 2010. Whether the failure Sunday might trigger a crisis of confidence in the commercial launch sector, possibly leading to higher insurance rates for communications satellites and other civilian payloads, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX advertises Falcon 9 rockets for around $60 million each, some $50 million less than the least expensive Atlas 5 rocket currently offered by United Launch Alliance. But ULA\u2019s record with its current generation of Atlas 5 and Delta 4 boosters is 83 successful launches and no outright failures.<\/p>\n<p>The Falcon 9 failure also will delay SpaceX\u2019s ambitious plans to perfect the technology needed to recover spent first stages for refurbishment and eventual reuse. Two attempts to land a Falcon 9 first stage on an off shore barge ended in failure in January and April and a third attempt was on tap Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Recovering, refurbishing and relaunching rocket stages that otherwise would be thrown away is a major element in Musk\u2019s drive to reduce the cost of spaceflight by operating a rocket company much like a commercial airline, re-flying boosters rather than building them from scratch for each flight.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX is expected to continue work to perfect its landing technology, but flight tests obviously will be on hold until Falcon 9 launches resume.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s mission got underway on time at 10:21 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) when the rocket\u2019s nine Merlin 1D engines ignited with a roar, generating 1.2 million pounds of thrust that quickly pushed the 20-story tall rocket away from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.<\/p>\n<p>The initial moments of the climb out of the dense lower atmosphere appeared to go smoothly as the rocket arced away to the northeast on a trajectory paralleling the East Coast of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX engineers reported \u201cpropulsion nominal\u201d and there were no indications of anything amiss as the rocket accelerated through a near cloudless blue sky.<\/p>\n<p>But in an instant, the normal-looking exhaust plume suddenly ballooned as a white cloud of vapor or propellant rushed from the upper part of the booster, quickly expanding in chaotic fashion as something went terribly wrong. Moments later, debris trails could be seen arcing though the sky as the initial cloud began to dissipate.<\/p>\n<p>Shotwell said recovery crews would attempt to collect as much debris as possible from the impact zone in hopes of finding clues as to what went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>It was the seventh flight of a Falcon 9\/Dragon resupply ship under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA calling for 12 missions to the space station to deliver 44,000 pounds of supplies and equipment through 2016. Orbital Sciences Corp. holds a similar $1.9 billion contract to launch Cygnus cargo craft.<\/p>\n<p>Both companies are needed to replace the lost cargo capability of the now-retired space shuttle. Orbital\u2019s Antares booster will be grounded throughout 2015 while the company replaces the rocket\u2019s Russian first-stage engines, relics of the Soviet Union\u2019s ill-fated moon program. Now, the Falcon 9 will be grounded as well pending the results of the SpaceX failure investigation.<\/p>\n<p>While the station crew will face no immediate problems from the loss of the Dragon cargo craft Sunday, it is not yet clear how long the station can support a crew of six if additional resupply problems occur.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf something happened to SpaceX, we\u2019d have to figure out where we were and how quickly they could return to flight and we would react accordingly,\u201d Suffredini said in an interview earlier this year. \u201cThe crew has enough supplies, including research, to continue to work for somewhere between four and six months. So the decision we\u2019d have to make is, how quickly can SpaceX get back up? And then what can we do with our Russian colleagues with regard to any support they might supply?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen we\u2019d have to look together about what are the right steps to take, do we go ahead and let everybody go home until we\u2019re ready to resupply again, or do we step down to three crew? And I suspect that\u2019s what we\u2019d do if we had to, we\u2019d step down to three crew first.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But given the supplies that are constantly stockpiled on board, mission planners would have \u201cquite a bit of time\u201d to work through the latest launch problem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn all cases, we have plenty of time to decide what to do next, figure out what we\u2019re really dealing with and then figure out how we want to react to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The Falcon 9 launched Sunday was an upgraded version of the rocket, featuring extended propellant tanks, more efficient and lighter engines and a new triply redundant flight computer. Shotwell said nothing significant had been changed for the rocket launched Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station,\u201d NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. \u201cHowever, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with more than 4,000 pounds of supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station \u2014 including a critical docking adapter needed by future U.S. crew ships \u2014 broke apart in a shower of debris shortly after […]<\/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":[1395,479,717,1602,1542,316,3971],"class_list":["post-16235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dragon","tag-falcon-9","tag-international-space-station","tag-iss-cargo","tag-space-launch-complex-40","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16235"}],"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=16235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}