Skip to footer

SpaceX rocket explodes, rains debris into Atlantic

"The vehicle has broken up," announced a NASA commenter of the unmanned rocket which had just lifted off from Cape Canaveral Sunday, bearing supplies for the International Space Station.

|
Sky News
SpaceX has experienced a "launch vehicle failure" upon firing its unmanned Dragon cargo ship towards the International Space Station - its third attempt this year.
  • By Marcia Dunn Associated Press

An unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying supplies and the first-of-its-kind docking port to the International Space Station broke apart Sunday shortly after liftoff. It was a severe blow to NASA, still reeling from previous failed shipments.

The accident occurred about 2 1/2 minutes into the flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic. 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 rocket around 2 minutes and 19 seconds, he said. No astronauts were on board.

The California-based SpaceX was trying to figure out what happened, noting that everything appeared to go well in flight until the Falcon 9 rocket went supersonic.

It was a huge setback for NASA, which is counting on private industry to transport cargo — and eventually astronauts — to the orbiting lab. The seven previous SpaceX supply runs had gone exceedingly well.

This is the second failed station shipment in a row. 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 are in no immediate trouble because of the latest failed delivery. 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, meanwhile, 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.

SpaceX is led by billionaire Elon Musk, who also heads up Tesla, the electric car maker.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to SpaceX rocket explodes, rains debris into Atlantic
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0628/SpaceX-rocket-explodes-rains-debris-into-Atlantic
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe