Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is dealing with conflicting data points as it continues to investigate its June 28 launch failure, company founder Elon Musk said Tuesday.
Musk said the data from the failure has been “quite difficult” to interpret and whatever happened was clearly neither simple nor straight forward. He said SpaceX would have something more definitive to say by the end of the week.
Musk repeated his Twitter post from Sunday that there was some kind of “overpressure event” in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank, but added that there’s still no clear theory that fits with all the data.
“We have to determine if some of the data is a measurement error of some kind or if there is actually a theory that matches sort of what appears to be conflicting data points,” Musk said in a conversation with NASA International Space Station (ISS) Program Office Manager Michael Suffredini at the ISS R&D conference in Boston.
Musk said SpaceX is assembling a “very precise” timeline by the millisecond to ensure it has the company’s sequence of events correct as it continues to investigate what caused its Falcon 9 rocket to explode high over the Atlantic Ocean. The Falcon 9 was on its way to ISS as part of its seventh Cargo Resupply Services (CRS-7) mission for NASA.
Musk said creating such detailed timeline is important so it can coordinate sensor readings with ground video. He called “matching things” to the exact time one of the company’s biggest challenges.
“The biggest sort of effort that we’ve been engaged in so far is putting together a super detailed timeline and then just making sure we have the sequence of events down as precise as possible,” Musk said.
SpaceX, Musk said, is working with NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other customers on reviewing the data. Musk said the company’s experience dealing with NASA has been “quite good” so far. He said the company welcomes any feedback, input or review of the data that would lead to a better understanding of the circumstances.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle exploded 139 seconds into flight, the company’s first launch failure in 19 Falcon 9 flights. The Air Force said last week it was too early to assess any impact from the launch failure on future DoD missions as Falcon 9 was recently certified to compete for national security space launch missions. The service said it is firmly committed to smoothly transitioning its launch enterprise with a continued strong focus on maintaining assured access to space for national security space missions (Defense Daily, June 29).
A SpaceX spokesman did not return a request for comment on Tuesday.