Fact: On 28 June 2015, SpaceX unmanned stage rocket blasted off at 10:21 am. A few minutes later white smoke and incineration of the cargo ship.
The International Space Station requires a constant supply of food and equipment for continual maintenance and advancement. The Elon Musk SpaceX Company has been granted by NASA to help their endeavors, lower the cost of unmanned flights, and creates a new age in space science. SpaceX has given rise to other projects from Elon Musk as well, such as Starlink, where investors can Starlink Aktien kaufen to add to their stock portfolios if they want to be part of this advancement. After quite a lot of successful launches (going 18 out of 18) and test flights, NASA and other agencies have backed the company for further flights. The main objectives of the company are not only to provide assistance in space exploration and shuttling services, but to re-use the rocket (Stage 1) itself thus lowering costs drastically.
Rockets perform in various stages (2-3 stages) that require separate engines and propellant. There are two types of functions that allow several separate rockets to be stacked upon one another. A serial stage, which mounts on top of another stage; also, a parallel stage is attached alongside another stage.
Recently, in SpaceX’s reusable rocket 3rd attempt at achieving liftoff, the unmanned cargo rocket (Falcon 9 rocket) incinerates 2 minutes and 19 seconds into flight. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, released information using twitter an hour after his initial statement that there was some sort of “overpressure even in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.” The last part of the update stated, “Data suggests counterintuitive cause.”
NASA and the Russian Space Program always take these issues into account. With three astronauts currently conducting research at ISS, there is no immediate danger as they have supplies to last far into October. But this wasn’t the only objective of the mission. SpaceX had planned to have its Stage 1 rocket re-enter the atmosphere and land on a platform. Sadly, this trial unable to be tested as the rocket incinerated during Stage 2.
It just reminds everyone just how tough aeronautics is.
References:
- NASA – Saturn V First Stage. (n.d.). Www.nasa.gov. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_first_stage.html#:~:text=The%20first%20stage%20of%20the%20Saturn%20V%20Rocket
- Rocket Staging. (2018). Nasa.gov. https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/rocket/rktstage.html
