SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Explodes Minutes After Liftoff

Many of us were looking forward to SpaceX’s third test of its plans to make reusable rockets, it was going to launch a Falcon 9 rocket today on a supply mission to the International Space Station but things didn’t go according to plan. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket exploded mid-air some two minutes and nineteen seconds after it had lifted off from Cape Canaveral this morning. Fortunately it was an unmanned mission so no serious harm was caused.

It merits mentioning here that Elon Musk’s private space exploration outfit SpaceX has launched 18 successful missions with the Falcon 9 rocket previously and this was the first Falcon 9 rocket that has failed.

Today’s launch would have seen the first stage of the Falcon 9 separate three minutes after launch and land itself on a drone ship at sea, it would have been SpaceX’s third try at this.

Falcon 9 had a Dragon cargo ship affixed to it which contained some 4,000 pounds of supplies including but not limited to science experiments and food, two Microsoft HoloLens devices were also included. Astronauts aboard the ISS are not at risk since they’re stocked through until September and Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos is flying another resupply mission on July 3rd.

Details are thin right now about how the Falcon 9 rocket failed today, SpaceX has put together its anomaly team to look into the data and it will update accordingly.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: spacex