Musk says broken strut caused rocket’s failure

ORLANDO, Fla. – A steel strut holding a helium bottle in place inside the doomed Falcon 9 rocket broke, causing a chain reaction less than a second long that ended with the rocket exploding over Cape Canaveral on June 28.

That’s the preliminary assessment offered by SpaceX founder Elon Musk Monday afternoon.

Musk said the fix should be easy: a new kind of strut. He said his company expects to be launching rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station again soon, perhaps as early as September.

The reason for the strut failure remains somewhat of a mystery because it was designed to handle five times as much force as it was experiencing at the time it failed, about two minutes after launch.

Musk speculated that the alloy structure of the steel was not up to specifications, and said SpaceX’s subsequent tests of other struts in inventory found others that appeared inadequate. Musk emphasized the theory is a preliminary finding and more investigation will be done.

Musk said the capsule and its contents could have been saved had SpaceX loaded it with the same emergency software that it has designed for its astronaut-rated Dragon II capsules, and it will be included on all future cargo launches.