An unmanned rocket by American rocket startup SpaceX, on a mission to resupply the International Space Station, exploded Sunday just minutes after liftoff.
It is unclear what, precisely, caused the rocket to fail and SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration will now conduct an investigation into the disaster in order to determine the cause.
The launch is the third resupply mission to fail since last October, meaning the three astronauts living aboard the space station now have four months worth of supplies, according to NASA.
Sunday’s launch would have brought 1,500 pounds of food and provisions to the orbiting crew, along with a new docking device and a water filtration system.
The next resupply missions are scheduled to be Russian flights on July 3rd and July 22nd while a Japanese rocket will launch on August 16th. SpaceX will then try again in early September.
NASA’s Scott Kelly, current aboard the space station along with two Russian cosmonauts posted a tweet from space Sunday afternoon, saying that “Space is hard.”
SpaceX, headed by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, has made seven successful trips to the ISS under a NASA contract, including one mission completed on May 21st. It is the first private company to complete a return trip to the space station.
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