SpaceX Explosion: Maybe Low Earth Orbit is Not so Routine After All

It appears getting supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) is becoming quite the challenge.  For the third time in about nine months, a resupply mission has ended in failure (the first failure being in October with Orbital Sciences and the second taking in place in April with a Russian launch).  This time it was SpaceX that experienced the disaster about 2 and a half minutes into the launch earlier today. 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had this to say about the failure:

We are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight. The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles. We will continue operation of the station in a safe and effective way as we continue to use it as our test bed for preparing for longer duration missions farther into the solar system. 

Administrator Bolden also noted that the Russians and Japanese have missions that will go up shortly to keep the ISS well-supplied.  This is encouraging, yet the decline is successful missions is very worrying, particularly since this same technology is (Russians) or will be (Space X) used for human transportation.  

So far, the SpaceX website has nothing on the incident.  The last piece for the press is from June 25.  I am sure quite a bit more information from NASA and SpaceX is to follow.   You can watch for more news at this link.