SpaceX - CRS-7 Mission patch.
June 28, 2015
The Falcon 9 rocket company SpaceX of exploded two minutes after Sunday's launch, NASA announced.
"The rocket has exploded," said the commentator of television of NASA, which was broadcasting live the launch, while pieces of the rocket fell to the ground. "It appears that we have a failure of the rocket (...) but at this stage we do not know exactly what happened," he added. Liftoff was at 10:21 a.m. EST.
Falcon 9 rocket launch on June 28, 2015, just a few seconds before explosion
Shortly after one commentator SpaceX said the Falcon 9 with video transmission was interrupted. "There was an anomaly in the first part of the flight," he said while noting that new motors of the first stage of the rocket had both turned on and the vehicle had reached supersonic speed.
Pressure too high
"It seems that there was a problem with the first stage of the rocket" before parting with the rest of the launcher, he said. On Twitter, the boss of SpaceX Elon Musk spoke "too much pressure in the liquid oxygen tank from the last stage of the rocket."
SpaceX - CRS-7 Launch explosion
The Dragon capsule was carrying almost two tons of equipment and supplies for NASA, including food and clothing for the crew as well as equipment for scientific experiments. She should have arrived early Tuesday to the ISS where it was to be anchored by two of the three current crew members who find late July its normal complement of six.
This was the seventh ISS resupply mission by SpaceX on behalf of the US space agency over the twelve planned under a contract of $ 1.6 billion. The six previous missions had all been a success.
Dragon, which was in 2012 the first private spacecraft to dock with the space station during a demonstration flight, is the only capsule in the world capable of bringing cargo to Earth.
More transport
NASA has concluded supply contracts ISS with two private firms, SpaceX and Orbital Science. The latter has already made two supply flights to the ISS, but suffered an accident during the launch of his third mission on October 29, due to the failure of a Russian engines of its Antares launcher.
After the explosion Sunday Falcon 9, NASA no longer means, at least for a while, transport to supply the orbital outpost. For the Russian cargo ship Progress has also been a failure in late April. It remains a Japanese cargo ship.
Example of SpaceX Dragon cargo lost in the explosion
After two failures in less than two months to supply the ISS, the question is how many reservations has the orbital outpost for the crew.
A Progress vehicle is ready to launch July 3, followed in August by a Japanese HTV flight. Orbital ATK, our other commercial cargo partner, is moving ahead with plans for its next launch later this year.
Two of its members, an American and a Russian, began in March stay unprecedented one year to study the effects on humans of long stays in weightlessness, in preparation for a manned mission to Mars in horiron 2030.
Images, Video, Text, Credits: SpaceX/ATS/NASA/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.
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