Breaking News: Explosion at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

In breaking news, there has been an explosion at one of the launch pads at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The pad in question is Launch Complex 40, which is currently used to by SpaceX to launch their Falcon-9 rocket to deliver payloads into Earth orbit.

SpaceX have been issuing statements throughout the day;

"SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the launch vehicle and its payload. Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries."

Video footage showing extensive damage to the Falcon-9 launch vehicle at the
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. credit: wftv.com

The 45th Space Wing at the Cape stated that the explosion, which occurred at approximately 9:07 a.m. as the rocket was being loaded with fuel.

"The anomaly originated around the upper stage oxygen tank and occurred during propellant loading of the vehicle." -SpaceX statement

SpaceX, which was set to launch the Israel Aerospace Industries/Spacecom AMOS-6 communications satellite on Saturday, was conducting a static fire test on the vehicle today ahead of the launch.

A static fire test is conducted in the days prior to every Falcon launch in which the engines of the rocket are ignited to test its engines as well as other onboard systems, without the vehicle leaving the pad.

More to follow shortly..

Failed Russian Progress Resupply Ship Burns Up In Atmosphere

The Russian Progress M-27M cargo spacecraft which failed to dock with the International Space Station last month has re-entered the Earth's atmosphere at 02:20 UTC over the Pacific Ocean.
Having launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 28 and loaded with over three tonnes of fuel, food and cargo for the orbiting complex, Russian Mission Control declared that they were experiencing propulsion, telemetry and communications issues with the spacecraft shortly after it separated from the Soyuz rocket.

File photo of a Progress Resupply Ship
credit: NASA TV

Video cameras installed on the vehicle showed that it had entered into an uncontrolled spin of roughly one rotation every four to five seconds. All attempts by Russian ground controllers to regain control of the vehicle were unsuccessful, and the decision was made to cancel the planned docking to the station on Wednesday April 29 when it ecame apparent that rendezvous and docking would not be possible.

The crew aboard the station in the meantime are doing well and have sufficient supplies on board to last for over four months. Expedition 43 Flight Engineer and ISS One Year Crew member Scott Kelly of NASA spoke with the Associated Press recently about the problems with the Progress,
"The important thing is that hardware can be replaced.. and we'll continue to operate the space station."

The next cargo ship on the manifest to visit the station will be a SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. This will be the company's seventh resupply mission to the station, scheduled to launch from Florida on June 19.

In the meantime, the Russian Federal Space Agency(Roscosmos) will be investigating the incident in order to find athe root cause of the anomaly. The Progress M-27M was the 150th Russian space freighter launched into space, and is only the second one to have suffered a casatrophic/major malfunction during its mission to resupply the ISS. In August 2011 a system error with the Soyuz rocket prevented the vehicle from reaching orbit.



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MAVEN Launches to Mars to Study Atmosphere of the Red Planet

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, has successfully launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

MAVEN on the launch pad
credit: NASA

MAVEN lifted off from Launch Complex 41 atop an Atlas V rocket at 18:28 Irish Time to mark the beginning of a ten month-long journey to the Red Planet.

The spacecraft, due to arrive at Mars in September 2014, will spend one Earth-year conducting its primary mission objectives. MAVEN will do this by using its scientific instruments to sample the uppermost regions of the martian atmosphere at its closest point in its elliptical orbit, just 150km above the surface. At this altitude, the spacecraft can sample the gas and ion composition directly.

At its highest point(6000km), MAVEN will carry out ultraviolet imaging of the entire planet. The altitude in MAVEN's orbit will be lowered five times over the course of the mission, in a maneuver known as a "deep dip." In each deep dip, the spacecraft will fly just 125km above the surface, gathering measurements and information about the well-mixed lower atmosphere of Mars, giving scientists a full profile of the top of the atmosphere.

Mission Objectives
The main goal of MAVEN is to study the upper atmosphere of Mars, and try to understand why the planet has lost so much of its atmosphere over time. Scientists believe that Mars was once a planet that was able to support microbial life, yet today, we see the planet as a cold desert-like inhospitable world.

Did You Know?
MAVEN is NASA's first Mars Mission to be managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Once MAVEN has finished its primary mission objectives, it is hoped that scientists back on Earth will have a better understanding as to what happened to the atmosphere of Mars, and how did a world that appeared to be teeming with microbial life end up like a desert.

The spacecraft will study how much atmosphere has been lost to space by measuring the current rate of escape, and why this is so.


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