So, yet another supply mission to the International Space Station(ISS) bites the dust as Space X’s CRS-7 mission exploded minutes after lift-off. The Space X rocket contained some necessary supplies for the ISS experiments and adapter modules for docking the next generation Dragon cargo ship by the innovative space company. Experts are working hard to find a satisfactory answer to the latest crashes of the new rocket missions. Hardly a month ago, a Russian rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan destroyed in mid-air 490 seconds after launch destroying a 1 billion dollars worth satellite along with it.
The unmanned mission from Space X perched on top of a Falcon 9 could only last 2 minutes and 18 seconds after the launch. It was ignited at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, and early monitoring showed normal behavior until it experienced an anomaly and came back crashing down into the Atlantic.
Although Musk himself tweeted that early investigations showed that the crash was caused by the overpressure in an Oxygen storage tank, but there has been no word from the Space X or NASA as of yet. The crash is an immediate concern for the International Space Station’s operations as this is the third such crash of supply lines of the famed international collaborative research center. When the previous two missions of Russia’s Progress 59 and NASA’s Antares had crashed, questions had been asked. But now that a competitive and cutting-edge company like Space X has faced such a disaster, increased uncertainty hangs over the future of the research center. CRS-7 was expected to make up for some of the previous launch fails, but it ended up in a failure as well.
The next supply mission, a Russian Progress 60 p is going to take place on July 3 from Baikonur. For the sake of the space exploration, we all hope that it goes according to plan.
Watch the live video capture of the doomed ship here: