Elon Musk says SpaceX launches could resume next month
In an interview with CNBC Friday,聽SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said that his company could return its rockets to flight in mid-December, following a Sept. 1 explosion that destroyed a聽Falcon 9 rocket and its payload.
In an interview with CNBC Friday,聽SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said that his company could return its rockets to flight in mid-December, following a Sept. 1 explosion that destroyed a聽Falcon 9 rocket and its payload.
Two months after a fueling failure caused a SpaceX rocket to burst into flames, the space launch company says it hopes its resume its launches as early as next month.聽
In an interview with CNBC Friday, chief executive Elon Musk said the company had learned the reason for the explosion and that SpaceX rockets could return to flight by mid-December.聽
"I think we've gotten to the bottom of the problem," Mr. Musk said. Investigators reportedly determined that the failure was caused by a fueling system malfunction that produced solid oxygen inside the rocket's upper stage tank, causing a reaction with聽a carbon composite bottle containing liquid helium that sits inside the oxygen tank, resulting in an explosion.聽
The Sept. 1 explosion raised the question of whether the private space company, which aims to send colonists to Mars by 2024, has been pushing the boundaries of space exploration a little too hard. Others predicted that the accident would create an opportunity for Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, a rival aerospace company.
SpaceX has also faced criticism from NASA聽for its plans to fuel rockets with humans on board, as Christina Beck reported for 海角大神 last week:聽
Despite concerns from NASA and other leaders in the spaceflight industry, some experts say mishaps such as the Falcon 9 rocket explosion, which also destroyed聽a $200 million communications satellite commissioned by Facebook to bring wireless connectivity to remote and impoverished areas,聽are a normal part of experimentation.
"With space missions, even the most advanced simulations cannot replace learning by doing, given the multitude of variables involved and the importance of learning from experience," Loizos Heracleous, a Warwick Business School professor in England who has worked with NASA, told the Monitor in an email. "This explosion will not change the long term goals of SpaceX, which are to reduce the cost of space flight through the use of reusable rockets, and eventually to colonise Mars."聽
Speaking on Friday, Musk did not elaborate on which mission would launch next or which launch pad SpaceX would use.聽
This report contains material from Reuters.聽