SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Destroyed In Launch Mishap

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with more than 4,000 pounds of supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station -- including a critical docking adapter needed by future U.S. crew ships -- broke apart in a shower of debris shortly after launch Sunday in a major setback for NASA and the California rocket company.

In a spectacular conflagration, the rocket, the 19th Falcon 9 launched by SpaceX since 2010, disintegrated in a sudden cloud of burning propellant followed moments later by arcing contrails of debris falling toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The last data from the spacecraft was received two minutes and 19 seconds after liftoff and it was not immediately clear what triggered the failure, whether Air Force range safety officers sent self-destruct commands in the wake of a malfunction or whether the rocket came apart on its own.

But the incident occurred just before the first stage's nine Merlin 1D engines were to shut down two minutes and 39 seconds after liftoff.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted: "Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data."

The dramatic failure came eight months after an Oct. 28 explosion that destroyed a space station cargo craft build by Orbital Sciences Corp. and two months after a Russian cargo ship spun out of control moments after reaching orbit April 28.

The Russians say they have found and fixed a problem with the Soyuz upper stage and another Progress is scheduled for launch July 8, followed by launch of a Japanese cargo ship in August.

But the back-to-back Progress and Dragon cargo failures are a major setback for NASA and its space station partners, reducing the reserves of food, clothing and other consumables needed by the lab's crew.

More important, the first of two International Docking Adapters, or IDAs, was on board as part of a major station reconfiguration to ready the lab for arrival of U.S.-built crew ships starting in 2017. A second IDA is scheduled for launch aboard a Dragon capsule in December, but the SpaceX launch schedule will almost certainly face a major revision in the wake of Sunday's failure.

In the near term, both of NASA's U.S. space station resupply contractors -- SpaceX and Orbital Sciences -- are out of action, leaving only the Russian Progress and Japanese HTV freighter to carry up supplies and equipment.

Space station program manager Mike Suffredini said Friday the station had enough on-board supplies to make it through October even if no other cargo ships show up. But the failure Sunday will require extensive contingency planning and it's not yet clear how that might play out.

Likewise, the failure will delay science operations. The SpaceX Dragon is the only spacecraft currently in operation that can bring cargo and research samples back to Earth, the failure Sunday will impact research aboard the station as sample returns will be suspended until the Falcon 9 returns to flight.

For SpaceX, a brash California company run by Musk, the failure was an equally dramatic setback. SpaceX that has been aggressively marketing its Falcon 9 boosters for commercial and military payloads, challenging the dominance of United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The company had chalked up 18 successful Falcon 9 launches in a row since the rocket's debut in 2010 and the failure Sunday likely will force major changes in the company's flight manifest and, depending on what went wrong, it could trigger a crisis of confidence leading to higher insurance rates for commercial satellites.

SpaceX advertises Falcon 9 rockets for around $60 million each, some $50 million less than the least expensive Atlas 5 rocket currently offered by United Launch Alliance. But ULA's record with its current generation of Atlas 5 and Delta 4 boosters is 83 successful launches and no outright failures.

The Falcon 9 failure also will delay SpaceX's ambitious plans to perfect the technology needed to recover spent first stages for refurbishment and eventual reuse. Two attempts to land a Falcon 9 first stage on an off shore barge ended in failure in January and April and a third attempt was on tap Sunday.

Recovering, refurbishing and relaunching rocket stages that otherwise would be thrown away is a major element in Musk's drive to reduce the cost of spaceflight by operating a rocket company much like a commercial airline, re-flying boosters rather than building them from scratch for each flight.

But it was not to be. The rocket almost certainly will be grounded pending a detailed failure investigation.

The mission got underway on time at 10:21 a.m. EDT (GMT-5) when the Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1D engines ignited with a roar, generating 1.2 million pounds of thrust that quickly pushed the 20-story tall rocket away from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The initial moments of the climb out of the dense lower atmosphere appeared to go smoothly as the rocket arced away to the northeast on a trajectory paralleling the East Coast of the United States.

SpaceX engineers reported "propulsion nominal" and there were no indications of anything amiss as the rocket accelerated through a near cloudless blue sky.

But in an instant, the normal-looking exhaust plume suddenly ballooned, quickly expanding in chaotic fashion as something went terribly wrong. Moments later, debris trails could be seen arcing though the sky as the initial cloud began to dissipate.

Air Force range safety officers sent self-destruct commands, but it wasn't immediately known whether the commands were received aboard the rocket before it came apart on its own.

It was the seventh flight of a Falcon 9/Dragon resupply ship under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA calling for 12 missions to the space station to deliver 44,000 pounds of supplies and equipment through 2016. Orbital Sciences Corp. holds a similar $1.9 billion contract to launch Cygnus cargo craft.

Both companies are needed to replace the lost cargo capability of the now-retired space shuttle. Orbital's Antares will be grounded throughout 2015 while the company replaces the booster's first-stage engines, relics of the Soviet Union's ill-fated moon program. Now, the Falcon 9 will be grounded pending the results of an exhaustive failure investigation.

While the station crew will face no immediate problems from the loss of the Dragon cargo craft Monday -- officials say the lab complex is fairly well stocked at present -- it is not yet clear how long the station can support a crew of six given the available cargo ships.

"If something happened to SpaceX, we'd have to figure out where we were and how quickly they could return to flight and we would react accordingly," Suffredini said in an interview earlier this year. "The crew has enough supplies, including research, to continue to work for somewhere between four and six months. So the decision we'd have to make is, how quickly can SpaceX get back up? And then what can we do with our Russian colleagues with regard to any support they might supply?

"Then we'd have to look together about what are the right steps to take, do we go ahead and let everybody go home until we're ready to resupply again, or do we step down to three crew? And I suspect that's what we'd do if we had to, we'd step down to three crew first."

But given the supplies that are constantly stockpiled on board, mission planners would have "quite a bit of time" to work through a launch problem.

"In all cases, we have plenty of time to decide what to do next, figure out what we're really dealing with and then figure out how we want to react to it," he said.

The Falcon 9 launched Sunday was an upgraded version, featuring extended propellant tanks, more efficient and lighter engines, an new triply redundant flight computer and a custom nose cone intended for large commercial satellites.

Musk has repeatedly told reporters that SpaceX would continue its quest despite any initial failures, saying before a 2013 launch that "I'm confident we will certainly make it on some subsequent launch."