An unmanned commercial rocket headed for the International Space Station to deliver supplies exploded just after launching Tuesday, filling the sky with a massive fireball.
The Antares rocket launched on Tuesday was on a mission to supply the International Space Station when it exploded and crashed back to earth, a NASA TV broadcast showed.
The explosion destroyed the rocket and spacecraft and immediately raised questions about the future of NASA's reliance on private commercial ventures to carry vital payloads into space to supply and support the orbiting space station.
NASA and Orbital Sciences were gathering data to determine the cause of the failure of the Orbital CRS-3, the space agency said.
NASA said there were no injuries,
"There has been a vehicle anomaly," Orbital Sciences, the contractor supplying the rocket, said on its Twitter feed. It added later in a statement, "The vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure."
The 14-storey rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp, bolted off its seaside launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility. It exploded seconds later. The cause of the accident was not immediately known, said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.
"This has been a lot of hard work to get to this point," Orbital Sciences Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson told the launch team just before lift-off.
The Launch had been delayed one day after a boat sailed into a restricted safety zone beneath the rocket's intended flight path.
Virginia-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies hired by NASA to fly cargo to the station after the space shuttles were retired. Tuesday's planned flight was to be the third of eight under the company's $1.9bn contract with NASA.
Antares carried a Cygnus spacecraft packed with 5,055 pounds (2,293kg) of supplies, science experiments and equipment, a 15 percent increase over previous missions.
Cygnus was to loiter in orbit until November 2, then fly itself to the station so astronauts can use a robotic crane to snare the capsule and attach it to a berthing port. The station, a $100bn research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations, flies about 260 miles (418km) above Earth.
Orbital Sciences is contracted to conduct eight supply missions delivering 20 tons of material to the space station. NASA said engineers from Orbital Sciences were not "tracking any issues" before the launch.
NASA said it is investigating the crash and collecting all telemetry and other data, along with the contractor. The National Transportation Safety Board is monitoring, NASA said. - AP
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