An unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station broke apart Sunday shortly after liftoff. It was a severe blow to NASA, the third cargo mission to fail in eight months.
The accident happened about 2 1/2 minutes into the flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A billowing white cloud emerged in the sky, growing bigger and bigger, then fiery plumes shot out. Pieces of the rocket could be seen falling into the Atlantic like a fireworks display gone wrong.
More than 5,200 pounds of space station cargo were on board, including the first docking port designed for future commercial crew capsules, a new spacesuit and a water filtration system.
NASA officials said they have enough supplies for the three-person crew on board the station to last till October and still plan to send three more crewmembers up in a late July launch. Normally, NASA likes to have a six-month cushion of food and water, but is now down to four months.
“We’re good from a food and water standpoint,” NASA’s top spaceflight official, William Gerstenmaier said at a press conference.
This puts added pressure on another resupply launch scheduled for Friday by Russia, it’s first attempt since losing a supply capsule in April.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket shattered while traveling at 2,900 mph, about 27 miles up. Everything seemed to be going well until the rocket went supersonic.
“We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure,” announced NASA commentator George Diller. Data stopped flowing from the Falcon 9 rocket around 2 minutes and 19 seconds, he said.
SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk later said that the pressure got too high in the liquid-oxygen tank of the rocket’s upper stage.
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