Miami – A SpaceX rocket exploded less than three minutes after blast-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida (southern US) yesterday, the first setback for the company Private headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
This is the third accident in less than a year involving the sending of material to the International Space Station (ISS) inhabited by two Russians and an American.
The countdown proceeded normally and the sky was clear, so there was concern about the conditions of release.
But there was silence in the control room at the time that two minutes 19 seconds after starting the takeoff, the images showed the explosion of the engine Falcon 9 and its debris falling to Earth.
“The car exploded,” said NASA commentator George Diller.
The rocket had started its take-off at 10h21 local (14H21 GMT), in the seventh mission of the private sector for NASA.
“The team still unknown exactly what happened” he said Diller.
“There was an anomaly in the first phase of flight,” said a commentator SpaceX, to report that the rocket had on its nine reactors Merlin and reached supersonic speed.
On Twitter, Musk wrote that the Falcon 9 “had a problem shortly after the end of the first phase,” referring to the period before the time the rocket is separated from the capsule, once they reach orbit.
The problem could be attributed to excessive pressure in the tank of liquid oxygen, according Musk.
“The data suggest contradictory causes.” “It’s all we can say for sure at the moment,” said the businessman, who also directs the vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors.
The Nasa announced it will give a press conference at 16h50 GMT.
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The accident was a surprise to many who followed the performance of the company that made more than a dozen successful launches.
Its main competitors, Orbital Sciences and Russian Progress, also failed in sending cargo into space in October and April respectively.
“The only thing you could count on the last years was with the Falcon 9 would be successful. “” Amid the chaos in the space industry, this was the only stable element, but not this have now, “he told AFP Marco Caceres, industry analyst for rocket the Teal Group.
Caceres recalled that SpaceX, which signed a contract with NASA billion dollars to carry materials to the ISS, also competes with aviation giant Boeing, which plans to send astronauts to the space station in 2017.
“I’m sorry the failed launch ofSpaceX. It has serious supply consequences Space Station. It’s good to be international, “wrote Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on Twitter.
The NASA administrator Charles Bolden said the agency was” disappointed “by the loss but said the ISS” has sufientes provisions for the coming months “.
A shipment of Russian Progress is planned on July 3, followed by another Japanese HTV Flight in August, told Bolden.
” Our other partners ., Orbital ATK, it plans to make a submission later this year, “
Three men live at this time on the International Space Station: Russian Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka and American Scott Kelly
“Unfortunately he failed. Space is something difficult, “Kelly on Twitter, where he posted a photo he took of the Florida coast, from where took off the rocket wrote.
Stay record
Padalka, 57, became meanwhile Sunday at the cosmonaut who spent more time in space: 804 days, with a sum of four stay in the ISS-during which he traveled the equivalent of four trips to Mars and the space station MIR.
12 000 848 times around the Earth orbit, traveled Padalka 546 969 192 km.
The Dragon capsule carried 800 thousand kg food, supplies and material for scientific experiments to the ISS.
The charge also included the first of two international Coupling Adapters, some parking spaces that were intended to facilitate the arrival at the ISS of ships commercial cargo in the coming years.
