SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft
© John Raoux/APThe SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft stands ready for launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Nasa said on Sunday morning that "something went wrong" with the launch of a SpaceX supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and confirmed that "the vehicle has broken up".

A video posted to Instagram appeared to show the vehicle exploding. Reports said pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic.

Cargo on the unmanned Dragon SpX-7 rocket included food and care packages, systems hardware, "science materials", computer resources and spacewalking equipment. It also carried a docking adaptor for the station as part of operations to prepare for future commercial missions. At the end of a five-week mission the rocket was due to return 675kg of goods to earth.

On Sunday morning, ISS astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted: "Watched #Dragon launch from @space_station Sadly failed Space is hard Teams assess below @NASAKennedy #YearInSpace".

At 10.22am on Sunday, Nasa tweeted a picture of the launch of the rocket with the traditional phrase: "We have liftoff."


Shortly afterwards, in a statement issued through Twitter, the agency said: "Something went wrong with the launch. @SpaceX is evaluating the status of the mission."

Moments later, it added: "The range confirmed that the vehicle has broken up. @SpaceX is putting together their anomaly team."

SpaceX, a private company, said the initial part of the liftoff went well, until the vehicle went supersonic.

Nasa commentator George Diller told the Associated Press it was not clear how the disaster occurred.

This is the second failed shipment of supplies to the ISS. In April, a Russian cargo ship fell out of control and came down. Last October, another of the company's supply ships was destroyed in a launch accident.

The Dragon SpX-7 mission is the seventh operational cargo mission conducted by the SpaceX Dragon to deliver supplies to the International Space Station and return cargo to Earth. Dragon remains the only visiting vehicle of ISS that can return a significant mass of cargo to the ground, aside from the crewed Soyuz spacecraft that can ferry a few dozen Kilograms of return items back to Earth along with its three crew members. The SpX-7 mission will carry 1,952 Kilograms of cargo to the Space Station and return 675 Kilograms to Earth at the conclusion of its five-week mission.

The Dragon SpX-7 cargo manifest is similar to that of previous missions comprised of scientific experiment materials, maintenance hardware for the various systems of ISS and supplies for the crew and the every-day life aboard the orbiting outpost. SpX-7 carries to ISS 676 Kilograms of crew supplies including food and care packages, 461kg of systems hardware, 529kg of science materials, 35kg of computer resources, and 166kg of spacewalking equipment. The science hardware delivered by SpX-7 supports 35 of the 250 studies ongoing aboard ISS as part of Expedition 44/45 plus 30 student-operated research investigations.

Riding to the Space Station inside the Trunk Section of the Dragon is International Docking Adapter-1, weighing 526 Kilograms, to be removed from the trunk robotically for future installation on Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 in the continued effort to prepare the docking port for Commercial Crew vehicles.

Returning aboard the Dragon will be 675 Kilograms of hardware comprised of 303kg of experiment materials, 32kg of crew supplies, 20kg of systems components, 164kg of EVA equipment, and 100 Kilograms of trash and no-longer needed items. The bulk of the return cargo is science hardware including performed experiments and precious samples that will be analyzed in laboratories on Earth.
A number of Dragon's payloads are described in detail on this page.