Mission failure: SpaceX explosion.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN JUNE, SpaceX--a private company charged with ferrying goods (and eventually people) to the International Space Station --experienced its first major setback in seven years when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded during a mission to deliver 4,000 pounds of supplies. The company's early analysis of the milliseconds leading up to the explosion, which happened shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral, pointed to the failure of a steel strut designed to support a canister of helium, but a more thorough investigation is ongoing.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called the explosion "a huge blow" for the company, but NASA's Bill Gerstenmaier told Popular Science that SpaceX is still on track to deliver astronauts to the space station by 2017. "We'll...