Launch of Private Rocket Fails; Three Satellites Were Onboard

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: August 3, 2008

A privately funded rocket was lost on its way to space Saturday night, bringing a third failure in a row to an Internet multimillionaire's effort to create a market for low-cost space-delivery.

The accident occurred a little more than two minutes after launch, and the two-stage Falcon 1 rocket appeared to be oscillating before the live signal from an on-board video camera went dead.

"We are hearing from the launch control center that there has been an anomaly on that vehicle," said Max Vozoff, a mission manager and launch commentator for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, on a webcast of the event soon afterward.

Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur, founded the company, known as SpaceX, in 2002 after selling his online payment company, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion. The company, based in Hawthorne, Calif., has been hailed as one of the most promising examples of an entrepreneurial "new space" movement, and has 525 employees.

In a statement read by a spokeswoman early Sunday morning during a teleconference with reporters, Mr. Musk said, "It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit" on the flight. He referred to the first stage of the launching as "picture perfect," but said, "unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation."

The rocket was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific at 11:34 p.m. Eastern time, after several hours of delays and one aborted launch attempt.

The first Falcon 1 launch, in March 2006, failed about a minute into its ascent because of a fuel line leak. A second rocket, launched in March 2007, made it to space but was lost about five minutes after launching.

On this flight, the Falcon carried three small satellites: one, called Trailblazer, for the Department of Defense, which was built as a kind of quick-turnaround demonstration. The two others were for NASA: PRESat, a small automated laboratory, and NanoSail-D, a test of the concept of using sunlight to push a thin solar sail and provide propulsion without propellant.

The rocket was also carrying the ashes of 208 people who had paid to have their remains shot into space, including the astronaut Gordon Cooper and the actor James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the wily engineer on the original "Star Trek" television series. The service is called an "Explorers Flight" by the company that arranges them, Celestis, Inc. Last night the company's web page stated, "The Explorers Flight mission appears not to have reached orbit tonight," and the Wikipedia pages of Cooper and Doohan had already been edited early Sunday morning to reflect the news.

The company is also developing a larger rocket, the Falcon 9, with nine engines in the first stage. That vehicle is intended to provide cargo services to the International Space Station under a contract for NASA after the shuttle program winds down in 2010. SpaceX performed a successful test firing of the Falcon 9 engines at its facilities in McGregor, Tex., last week.

Charles Lurio, an independent space consultant, it should not be surprising to lose single-use rocket vehicles in the early stages of development, because their very design does not allow test flights. "It's all or nothing once it leaves the pad," he said. "But I hope SpaceX keeps trying," he said. "They're very competent people."

In Mr. Musk's statement, he insisted that the company will not be deterred and still has strong support from its backers. "SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward," he said, and added that the fourth flight, currently scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of the year, and fifth flights are being prepared, and that he has given the go-ahead "to begin fabrication of flight 6."

And, he added, "We are in very good financial basis here. We have the resolve, we have the financial base, and we have the expertise" to identify the problem and go forward. "There should be no question about that." In a version of the statement distributed to employees, Mr. Musk said that the company "recently accepted a significant investment" that, along with the company's current cash reserves, will ensure that "we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching" the Falcon 1 and the larger Falcon 9 vehicles.

In the teleconference, Diane Murphy, the company spokeswoman, said that the mood at the company's headquarters quickly switched from excitement and cheers at the seemingly successful launch to concern and then disappointment. But when Mr. Musk addressed the employees, she said, and told them that the company would move forward with the fourth flight, "One of our employees immediately spoke up and said with great resolve, 'yes we will. We will get to orbit' — and everyone sent up a cheer."