While a full and comprehensive investigation into the mishap is expected to take time, possibly several months, preliminary assessment by SpaceX points to “Excess pressure in an upper-stage liquid oxygen tank as causing an explosion less than three minutes after lift-off as the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket was nearing point of separation”. But the recent failure of the Falcon 9 is likely to impede, albeit even temporarily, the company’s ambitious launch programme of the future. Without doubt, the record by all standards has been impressive. In addition, the company has signed a contract to deliver five of the Falcon Heavy rockets that are of the generation beyond the Falcon 9. This year alone, SpaceX has successfully launched five Falcon 9 rockets and has orders for another 36. Of the total of 19 missions undertaken so far, 18 have been successful. The failed launch on June 28 was the 19th mission of the Falcon 9 rocket since the Falcon 9 programme began in 2010. The second and the third launch of the Falcon 1 also met with a fate similar to the maiden launch. However, in less than 60 seconds after the launch, the Falcon 1 developed a fuel leak that resulted in a fire that was followed by an explosion. The very first in the series, the Falcon 1 which was a small expendable orbital carrier rocket developed by SpaceX, undertook its maiden flight on March 24, 2006, from the SpaceX launch site on Omelek Island in the Marshall Islands. A review of the history of failure of rockets launched on space missions reveals that this adage is true for the Falcon series of rockets as well. This may only be a mere coincidence but one that is bizarre indeed! There was a similar failure in October 2014 when an Antares rocket built by Musk’s cargo competitor Orbital Sciences, exploded just six seconds after lift-off from the launch pad.įailure in space missions in neither a new nor is a surprising event. It is noteworthy that both the missions that ended in disaster in quick succession in a period of two months, were launched on the same day of the month i.e. A mere two-and-a-half minutes after the liftoff, even before its first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket had shut down and separated, the rocket exploded 43 kilometres above the surface of the Earth, blowing itself and the Dragon cargo vehicle to smithereens, scattering its remnants and the supplies on board on to the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Canaveral. A $60-million Falcon 9 rocket owned by SpaceX and carrying the unmanned Dragon cargo space vehicle on a logistic support mission to the International Space Station (ISS), exploded shortly after its launch from Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral on June 28, 2015. Barely had the scientific community involved in space exploration recovered from the Progress M-27M unmanned space vehicle launched by Russia from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 28, 2015, came the news of another disaster in space.
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