![]() ![]() Either way, engineers believe, the failure of the oxygen tank triggered the rocket's destruction. It was not clear whether the buoyant helium bottle might have shot up to the top of the oxygen tank, possibly damaging the structure, or whether it simply released enough helium to cause it to rupture. "This is quite confusing, but we think what may have happened is that as the helium bottle broke free and twisted around, it may have pinched off that line to the helium manifold and restored pressure in the helium system but released enough helium into the liquid oxygen tank to cause the liquid oxygen tank to fail," he said. Musk said the data were confusing because they initially showed a drop in helium pressure, which would be expected in a breach, "and then, somewhat strangely, a rise in the helium system back to approximately its starting pressure." They are certified to handle 10,000 pounds of stress, but the failure occurred at a calculated load of just 2,000 pounds. The steel struts measure about two feet long and an inch or so thick. "At approximately 3.2 Gs, the strut holding down one of the helium bottles appears to have snapped and as a result, releasing a lot of helium into the upper stage oxygen tank and causing an overpressure event quite quickly," Musk said. And that was determined by acoustic triangulation - locating the exact position of the break by analyzing sound from different sensors - not from any definitive data in the telemetry stream. When all was said and done, a strut failure was the most likely explanation for the mishap. From the first indication of a problem to the complete loss of telemetry took just 0.893 seconds.ĭata from more than 3,000 telemetry channels were analyzed, along with tracking camera footage and video from on-board cameras. A new contract is expected to be awarded later this year, and Musk said he did not expect the failure to cause any changes in the company's bid.īut solving the mystery of what went wrong has been a major challenge. The Dragon capsule launched on June 28 was the seventh operational flight under the NASA contract. SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for at least 12 missions to deliver more than 20 tons of equipment and supplies to the space station. Now everyone in the company appreciates how difficult it is to get rockets into orbit successfully, and we'll be stronger for it." "When you've only ever seen success you don't fear failure quite as much. ![]() "This is the first time we've had a failure in seven years, and I think to some degree the company as a whole became maybe a little bit complacent," he said. He also said the debut launch of the company's powerful Falcon 9 Heavy, made up of three Falcon 9 first stages strapped together, will be deferred to next spring while the company focuses on recovering from the failure. ![]() But he said he's hopeful flights can resume as early as September, although it's not yet clear how the manifest will shake out or what customer will get the next launch slot. Musk said the failure and subsequent launch delays likely will cost the company several hundred million dollars in lost revenue. Lost in the SpaceX mishap, along with supplies and equipment for the station crew, was the first of two docking mechanisms needed to enable commercial crew capsules being built by Boeing and SpaceX to dock with the lab complex starting in 2017. The Russian cargo craft reached orbit, but it suffered severe damage moments before, or during, release from the booster's upper stage and crashed back to Earth on May 8. It was the first failure in 19 flights of a SpaceX Falcon 9 and the second loss in a row for the space station program following the April 28 failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress supply ship. ![]() "We could have saved Dragon if we had the right software" on board. "That's an unfortunate thing," Musk said. He said a software change will be implemented on future space station resupply flights to enable the Dragon's parachutes, normally used to lower the craft to a gentle ocean landing at the end of a mission, to deploy in the event of a launch failure. Musk said engineers were able to receive telemetry from the spacecraft until it disappeared over the horizon on the way to a catastrophic ocean impact. The Dragon cargo capsule it was carrying, loaded with more than 4,000 pounds of equipment and supplies bound for the International Space Station, apparently broke away from disintegrating rocket intact. The first stage continued firing, but moments later the rocket broke up in a shower of debris. ![]()
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