SpaceX rocket breaks apart en route to space station

An unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station broke apart Sunday shortly after liftoff. It was a severe blow to NASA, the third cargo mission to fail in eight months.

The accident happened about 21/2 minutes into the flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A billowing white cloud emerged in the sky, growing bigger and bigger, then fiery plumes shot out. Pieces of the rocket could be seen falling into the Atlantic like a fireworks display gone wrong.

More than 5,200 pounds of space station cargo were on board, including the first docking port designed for future commercial crew capsules, a new spacesuit and a water filtration system.

NASA officials said they have enough supplies for the three-person crew on board the station to last till October and still plan to send three more crewmembers up in a late July launch. NASA likes to have a six-month cushion of food and water, but is now down to four months.

“We’re good from a food and water standpoint,” NASA’s top spaceflight official, William Gerstenmaier, said at a news conference.

This puts added pressure on another resupply launch scheduled for Friday by Russia, its first attempt since losing a supply capsule in April.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket shattered while traveling at 2,900 mph, about 27 miles up. Everything seemed to be going well until the rocket went supersonic.

“We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure,” announced NASA commentator George Diller.

Data stopped flowing from the Falcon 9 rocket around 2 minutes and 19 seconds, he said.

Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and chief executive, later said that the pressure got too high in the liquid-oxygen tank of the rocket’s upper stage.

“That’s all we can say with confidence right now,” Musk said via Twitter.

The private company is in charge of the accident investigation, with oversight from the Federal Aviation Administration, which licensed the flight.

The Dragon capsule, which is designed to eventually carry people, still sent signals to the ground after the rocket broke apart, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said. Had astronauts been on board, a still-being tested abort system would have whisked them away to safety in such a mishap, she said.

SpaceX hopes to launch astronauts from U.S. soil again aboard the Falcon-Dragon combination in December 2017. They still can make that target, Shotwell said. Now NASA buys seats from Russia to get astronauts to the orbiting lab.

Shotwell assured reporters that the California-based company will fix the problem – “and get back to flight.”

Losing this shipment – which included replacements for items lost in the two earlier failed supply flights – was a huge setback for NASA.

“This is a blow to us,” Gerstenmaier said, citing the docking port, a spacesuit and considerable scientific research that had been on board. He said there was nothing common among the three accidents, “other than it’s space and it’s difficult to go fly.”

The three space station residents were watching the launch live from orbit, including astronaut Scott Kelly.

“Sadly failed,” Kelly said via Twitter. “Space is hard.”