SpaceX officials confirmed today that although a range safety destruct signal was sent to the Falcon 9 rocket yesterday, it was 70 seconds too late. The “mishap” had already occurred and the signal played no role in the loss of the vehicle. 

Until this statement from SpaceX, it was not clear if the rocket
malfunctioned, veered off course, and was destroyed by the Range
Safety Officer, or if the rocket exploded on its own.  Rockets are
equipped with Flight Termination Systems that can be activated by
sending an abort signal in order to protect public safety.

The Falcon 9 rocket exploded 139 seconds after launch yesterday (June 28).  The launch, at 10:21 am ET from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, part of the Air Force’s Eastern Test Range, came after a flawless countdown with excellent weather conditions.   It was sending a robotic Dragon spacecraft loaded with about two tons of supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).  The mission was the seventh operational flight under SpaceX’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA — CRS-7 or SpX-7.

No one was aboard this flight.  SpaceX is designing a crew version of Dragon for NASA’s commercial crew program, but that is not in service yet.  An emergency abort system is integrated into the crew version of Dragon.  It would allow the crew capsule to detach from its rocket at any point on the trip up to orbit and carry the crew away to a safe landing.

Two more SpaceX ISS cargo flights were planned this year, in September and December.   The schedule for those and all other launches of the Falcon 9 are on hold until this failure is understood. 

While many are focused on the impact to the ISS program or SpaceX’s efforts to compete for national security launches, SpaceX has many other customers who will be affected.  Among them is NOAA.  The launch of the Jason-3 ocean altimetry satellite had been scheduled for August 8 after several delays.  A NOAA spokesman confirmed today that the failure has affected the Jason-3 launch and NOAA is working with its partners to determine the next steps.   NOAA and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) are the lead agencies for Jason-3, partnered with NASA and its French counterpart, CNES, who were responsible for Jason-1 and Jason-2, as well as the original satellite in the series, Topex-Poseidon.  The NOAA spokesman added that Jason-2, launched in 2008, continues to function nominally.

Financial analyst Chris Quilty of Raymond James & Associates said
today that he is betting on a 4-6 month delay “which shouldn’t be
tremendously impactful” to the companies whose satellites are on
SpaceX’s manifest.  Quilty is Senior Vice President, Equity Research, and
closely follows the space business. He added that if the delay is
longer than that, it “could have a material impact on 2016/2017
revenues.” 

At a press conference yesterday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said she could not provide a timeframe for when Falcon 9 will return to flight, but confidently predicted it will be less than a year.  She said then, and the company reiterated today, that it is in an extraordinary position to identify the
problem and fix it because it owns the majority of the launch vehicle
and its components, which streamlines the investigation.  SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk tweeted that they still do not know what happened even after several thousand engineering hours of review.

Cause still unknown after several thousand engineering-hours of review. Now parsing data with a hex editor to recover final milliseconds.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2015

SpaceX vowed today that it would examine every available piece of data to identify the root cause, fix it, and return to flight.

SpaceX’s seventh operational cargo launch to the International Space Station (ISS) ended with an explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket 2:19 minutes into flight today.   Anomaly teams are being assembled.  NASA plans a “contingency press conference” no earlier than 12:30 pm ET.  The exact timing is dependent on when the right people are available to participate and what information has been gleaned.

The countdown for the SpaceX CRS-7 (or SpX-7) mission proceeded perfectly to launch at 10:21 am ET from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), FL.  SpaceX and NASA each provided live webcasts of the launch. Suddenly, as operation of the first stage was nearing its end, the vehicle exploded.  The SpaceX webcast went silent, but NASA continued to report on the event.  “Range confirms we’ve had a non-nominal flight,” NASA’s announcer reported, referring to personnel in charge of the Eastern Test Range of which CCAFS is part.  After many minutes, SpaceX’s announcer returned to the air and confirmed “an anomaly during first stage flight,” then ended the webcast.  SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk sent this tweet:

Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

 

NASA continued with its webcast and reported that experts were reviewing the timeline of the failure to correlate data from the vehicle with data from the Range Safety Officer (RSO) to determine what happened when.   Rockets have Flight Termination Systems that an RSO engages if a rocket goes off course.  It was not clear in the first minutes whether the rocket exploded on its own or whether it deviated from its course and was destroyed by the RSO.

Check back here for more information as it becomes available.

The implications are significant.  Not only is this the third ISS cargo resupply system to fail in the past 8 months (first Orbital’s Antares in October 2014, then Russia’s Progress M-27M in April, now this), but this is the same rocket that SpaceX plans to use for the crew version of its Dragon spacecraft that is one of two competitors chosen by NASA for the final phase of the commercial crew program (Boeing is the other).  That version of Dragon does have an embedded abort system so a crew can escape from the rocket anytime on the ride up to orbit, so a Falcon 9 failure would not necessarily jeopardize a crew, however.

In addition, SpaceX just finally won certification by the Air Force to launch national security satellites using the Falcon 9 based in part on its record of consecutive launch successes (18 before today).  Its battle to win certification, coupled with the contentious debate over how quickly a U.S. alternative to Russia’s RD-180 rocket engines used by one of its competitors, United Launch Alliance (ULA), for the Atlas V rocket, has put the company in the spotlight, pitting entrepreneurial “new space” against established systems like ULA’s.  ULA President Tory Bruno tweeted his condolences:

Very sorry to hear of the #CRS7 loss. Heart breaking for the men and women who worked on the rocket and its mission. Hang in there SX, NASA

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) June 28, 2015

As the saying goes, launching rockets is hard.   Launch failures are not common, but neither are they entirely surprising. This one is especially significant because of the implications for resupplying the ISS crew after the failures of the other two systems, SpaceX’s role in NASA’s commercial crew program and NASA’s hope to have those systems ready by 2017, and the effort the company expended to obtain certification to launch national security satellites.  Congressional critics of the commercial crew program and SpaceX in particular may be emboldened by the failure, although NASA and its supporters may use it to underscore their argument that two commercial crew systems, not just one, are needed precisely for such a situation so there is redundancy.

SpaceX recently successfully resupplied the 6-member ISS crew and the Russians plan to launch another Progress cargo ship next week (July 3) after concluding the April failure was due to a “design peculiarity.”  Japan also sends cargo to the ISS using its HTV spacecraft.  An HTV is scheduled for launch in August. Orbital ATK is planning to launch its Cygnus cargo spacecraft to ISS using an ULA Atlas V by the end of 2015 (Antares will not be ready for return-to-flight until at least the first quarter of 2016).  So while there are several cargo resupply systems, it is because crew requires a lot of supplies including spare parts.  These spacecraft also send up science experiments for the crew to perform.  Importantly, this mission also was carrying the first of two International Docking Adapters that must be installed onto the space station in order for the commercial crew spacecraft to dock.

Additional SpaceX cargo resupply launches were scheduled for 2015.  How long they will be delayed will depend on what went wrong and what is needed to fix the problem.

In a statement on the SpaceX launch failure today, the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee announced that it will hold a hearing on the status of the International Space Station (ISS) on July 10.   The statement, from the chairs of the full committee and its space subcommittee, was one of several expressing disappointment about the failure but determination to learn what went wrong and continue to support the ISS.

The failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket 139 seconds after launch this morning (Sunday, June 28) marked the third failure in eight months of the systems that resupply the ISS with food, water, science experiments, spare parts and other equipment needed to sustain the station and its crew.  Usually six people inhabit the ISS although only three are there now because they are in the middle of a crew rotation. It was SpaceX’s seventh operational cargo mission to the ISS under its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA — CRS-7 or SpX-7.  The first six were successful.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, several members of Congress, and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation issued statements today.

Bolden said that although NASA was disappointed, the ISS crew is safe and has sufficient supplies for several months.  “SpaceX has demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in its first six cargo resupply flights to the station, and we know they can replicate that success.”  Spaceflight “is an incredible challenge, but we learn from each success and each setback….Today’s launch attempt will not deter us from our ambitious human spaceflight program.”  Bolden is a former astronaut who piloted or commanded four space shuttle missions.

“Disappointed” was a common term expressed today, including by House SS&T Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) who added that he wants to ensure the safe and timely supply of ISS.  New space subcommittee chairman Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), who represents the district that includes Johnson Space Center, said he was eager to learn what went wrong and determine “how it can be fixed to strengthen and advance our commercial cargo program.”  Their press release announced the July 10 hearing.

Their Democratic counterparts, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the ranking Democrat on the full committee, and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking Democrat on the space subcommittee, also issued statements.  Johnson said she was grateful no one was hurt and is confident SpaceX and NASA will take appropriate corrective actions.  Edwards also said she was thankful no one was hurt and the failure “shows us once again that space is difficult.”  She stressed that she will continue to press members of the House Appropriations Committee to fully fund the Obama Administration’s requests for transporting cargo and crew to the ISS.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, tweeted the following:

What happened today is why I hold my breath and say a little prayer every time we launch a big rocket.

— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) June 28, 2015

 

As a Congressman, Nelson flew as part of the crew of the space shuttle mission STS-61C in January 1986 (Bolden was the pilot of that mission).  The next shuttle launch, 10 days after he landed, was the Challenger tragedy.  His flight used the orbiter Columbia, which was lost in the space shuttle program’s second tragedy in 2003.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), which promotes the development of commercial human spaceflight, praised the “amazing success of a track record that a commercial launch provider like SpaceX has and continues to enjoy” although failures like today’s “remind us that there is still work to be done.”

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said during a press conference this afternoon that early data indicate that the cause of the Falcon 9 launch failure today was due to pressurization issues in the second stage.  Some confusion remains as to whether the rocket exploded on its own or because of a destruct signal sent by the Range Safety Officer, but Shotwell said she did not believe it was due to a destruct signal. 

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket exploded 139 seconds (2:19 minutes) into flight this morning (Sunday, June 28) following a 10:21 am ET launch.   NASA posted a video of the launch and failure on YouTube.  Shotwell said data showed “some pressurization indications in the second stage” that the company will be “tracking down and following up on.”  She could not provide any other details at this early stage of the investigation other than saying they do not suspect the first stage.

The Falcon 9 was carrying a Dragon capsule with two tons of supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) under SpaceX’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.  This was the seventh operational mission — SpaceX CRS-7 or SpX-7.

The cargo included food and other crew supplies, science experiments, a new extravehicular spacesuit to replace one aboard ISS that has partially failed, and the first of two International Docking Adapters (IDAs).  The IDAs are needed for the crew version of Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft to dock with the ISS.  Both were selected for the final phase of NASA’s commercial crew program.  NASA has been hoping that both systems will be available by 2017, although today’s failure certainly will impact SpaceX’s launch plans.  The crew version of Dragon is equipped with a launch abort system that allows the crew capsule to separate from the rocket at any time during the ride to orbit and carry the astronauts away to a safe landing.  That was not the version of Dragon on this launch, but the capsule did appear to survive for at least a short time after the explosion.

This was a commercial launch authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which facilitates and regulates commercial space launch services.  Pam Underwood, Deputy Division Manager of the Operations Integration Division of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, said during the press conference that the incident has been categorized as a “mishap.”  Under those regulations, the company takes charge of the investigation, while FAA oversees it.   This is the same process used for the failure of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s (now Orbital ATK) Antares rocket in October 2014 on its third operational cargo mission to the ISS (Orb-3).

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, and Mike Suffredini, ISS Program Manager at NASA, also participated in the post-failure press conference at Kennedy Space Center.

Gerstenmaier, Suffredini and Shotwell conveyed a similar theme — launching rockets is hard, sometimes they fail, and the key is learning from whatever went wrong and moving on.

Gerstenmaier and Suffredini also made clear they do not want to underplay this “big loss” that is “a blow to us,” but they wanted to focus on the fact that the ISS crew is safe and well provisioned.  SpaceX recently completed its sixth operational mission to the ISS, taking up many supplies and returning to Earth much of the scientific experiments and other hardware NASA wanted back on Earth.  

Russia suffered its own failure of a cargo mission to the ISS, Progress M-27M, in April.  It is set to try again on Friday, July 3.  When asked if NASA wants to add any items to that spacecraft at the last minute to compensate for anything lost today, Suffredini said no, that the crew has everything it needs.  NASA tries to “protect” against such failures by having extra supplies aboard and the crew will be fine through October even if no additional supplies are delivered.  He noted that other cargo vehicles are on track to deliver cargo to the ISS in the near future:  Progress M-28M on July 3 and Japan’s HTV in August.   Orbital ATK is also planning for the next launch of its Cygnus cargo ship before the end of 2015 using the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket.  Its own Antares rocket is expected to return to flight in the first quarter of 2016.

The NASA representatives said they do not expect any change to the launch of the next ISS crew in July because of this failure.  Usually there are six people aboard the ISS, but currently there are only three — NASA’s Scott Kelly and Russia’s Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka — because they are in the middle of a crew changeover.   Three crew members just returned to Earth.  Their replacements — NASA’s Kjell Lindgren, Japan’s Kimiya Yui, and Russia’s Oleg Kononenko — are scheduled for launch on July 22.   Gerstenmaier stressed that the Flight Readiness Review still needs to be held for that launch and NASA wants to fully understand the Progress M-27M failure to make sure a similar problem could not happen on a crew launch (both use Soyuz rockets, although they are different versions), but the SpaceX failure today should not be a factor.  Russia concluded the Progress M-27M failure was due to a “design peculiarity,” but Gerstenmaier’s comments implied that NASA is not yet fully satisfied with that answer.

Asked about whether this might hamper NASA’s efforts to convince Congress to provide full funding for the commercial crew program, Gerstenmaier stressed the need for the full $1.244 billion requested for FY2016.  The House approved $1.000 billion and the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $900 million.  Both are above the current level of funding ($805 million), but less than the request.   Gerstenmaier said the money is needed to do the technical work necessary to move forward, pointing to the three failures over the past eight months in the commercial cargo program (Orb-3, Progress M-27M, and today’s CRS-7) as examples of what can go wrong.  There is no commonality across the failures, he said, except that “it’s space and it’s difficult” to fly.

Some members of Congress have suggested that only one company is needed or that if two are needed as NASA insists, they be funded in a “leader-follower” mode where one company proceeds more quickly than the other to spread out the costs. Gerstenmaier remained steadfast that two systems are needed to provide redundancy, and there is no way to predict which company might be ready sooner than the other.

Shotwell was optimistic about how long it will take to identify and fix the problem.  While reluctant to provide a time frame at this early stage, she said she expects it will be “a number of months” but less than a year.  She declined to say how much the launch cost, saying that SpaceX does not discuss costs in public.  

SpaceX and NASA are continuing to investigate this morning’s failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.  It was launching a robotic Dragon cargo spacecraft full of supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) crew.  The rocket failed 2:19 minutes after launch.

NASA TV and SpaceX provided live coverage of the launch of SpaceX’s seventh Commercial Resupply Services mission, CRS-7 (or SpX-7). A SpaceX video showing the failure is posted on YouTube.  The failure is at 23:44 into the video.  NASA also has a video beginning with the launch itself.  The explosion is at 2:32.

SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk confirmed the failure through a series of tweets (@elonmusk).

Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

That’s all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

 

NASA is planning a “contingency press conference” no earlier than 12:30 pm ET today that will broadcast by NASA TV.  Check back here for more information as it becomes available.