Looks like they had a payload go with it. Sad.
> "SpaceX confirm Amos-6 was aboard the Falcon 9 and was lost in the explosion."
https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77135388623807283...
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
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Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#52Wild-ass speculation in the absence of more information than a tweet and a photo of a pad fire: SpaceX test-fire the first stage motors before each launch. If this was a test firing that went spectacularly wrong, it's embarrassing -- but there won't have been any human beings within blast range and it's better to fail in test than to fail in flight with a payload on top. (If it was a catastrophic failure during fueli…
It looks like it was during fueling, and the payload is lost.
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
No payload on rocket while hotfire test.
Payload is sometimes mated, just depends. No word yet on this payload. https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77134295079838924... UPDATE: payload lost. https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/771352111657385984
That confirmation is so strange. Why would you confirm something with the screenshot of notepad "officially" when you have a twitter account?
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#54[deleted]
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#55official word: Payload lost. No one injured. This was not the re-used rocket, but instead a brand new core.
https://twitter.com/TroyLeeCampbell/status/77135367764276019...
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#56My mind goes to the debugging stage after the dust has settled... how would a rocket scientist determine the cause of a RUD like this?
About the same as you debug an issue from having just a tracelog. The rocket and pad equipment have quite a few sensors that record information, so you have quite a lot of data afterwards to spot anomalies (you could also compare to previous successful launches / static fires to spot them). Admittedly, that doesn't really explain how they figure out some stuff, e.g. with CRS-7 the problem was with a strut holding a high-pressure helium vessel in the second stage. They likely would have seen the overpressurization of the tank and there are not many sources for that pressure, but pinpointing it to a piece that doesn't even exist anymore ... beats me.
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Payload is sometimes mated, just depends. No word yet on this payload. https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77134295079838924... UPDATE: payload lost. https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/771352111657385984
That confirmation is so strange. Why would you confirm something with the screenshot of notepad "officially" when you have a twitter account?
He's a space news reporter at Ars Technica. It makes sense they'd be one of the first to get the SpaceX news release. It has too many characters to fit in a tweet, and even if it could fit, embedding an image of the text sets it apart from the tweeter's introduction and makes it more readable. It's standard practice on twitter to use images for blocks of text.
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#58I am surprised that no one has mentioned whether or not this failure is related to SpaceX's first time reusing a rocket. If so, hopefully this isn't too much of a setback!
The reused rocket will be used to launch SES-10 later this year, not AMOS-6. Source: http://spacenews.com/spacex-to-launch-ses-10-satellite-on-re...
Question is whether they will have a launch pad at that time and how long investigations will last and until a fix is deployed. May well be that there are no more launches this year.
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX frequently conducts these static fire tests with the payload on board. So unfortunately it's entirely possible that AMOS-6 is lost too. Very sad. Hopefully no one is hurt.
The entire pad may be totaled, too.
Seems likely. Based on the photos we've seen the strongback sure as hell is. It's all twisted and mangled.
Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
#60You can see the smoke plume on the radar image from Melbourne airport weather radar http://imgur.com/a/FQ4qx Live link: http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=mlb
We sure that's a smoke plume? There's a lot of radar activity over Florida presently due to the "OMG first hurricane in 11 years!!!"[0] [0] I live in and am in the Big Bend area, so the news, tweets, emails, and texts about the storm are a bit ... much.
It sure looked like a plume. I like the simple animated gif view of the radar:
http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar_lite.php?rid=MLB&produc...
The first couple of images have cycled out now, but they showed that blob expanding from nothing right where it starts in the current sequence.
(it starts at 1246 here: http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/RadarImg/N0R/MLB/ Not a great view without the map underneath.)