SpaceX launches ISS resupply spacecraft, despite mid-launch engine explosion

Just over a year since the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the retirement of the Space Transportation System, SpaceX has successfully launched a Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket — the first ever commercial resupply mission (CRS-1) to the International Space Station.

You can watch the launch in full, technicolor 1080p glory below. Watch out for the 90 second mark, where you can see one of the nine Merlin engines explode.

Yes, you read that right: During last night’s launch, an engine exploded — and yet the Falcon 9 rocket continued its climb into the stratosphere unabated. Believe it or not, Falcon 9 is designed for such “engine out” occurrences. When you’re burning RP-1 and liquid oxygen to produce 138,000 pounds of thrust, explosions happen. In this case, the Falcon 9′s on-board computers almost instantly register the engine failure, and then alter the output of the remaining eight engines to compensate. If you watch the video clip again, you’ll see that the engine outage is a non-issue; the rocket continues on course, as if nothing happened.

Both the Space Shuttle and Saturn 5 launch vehicle had similar “engine out” capabilities, though in their cases the solution was to shut down the faulty engine before it could explode. It isn’t clear why the Merlin engine exploded (SpaceX will hopefully hold a press conference later today with more info), but in any case it seems that the Falcon 9 rocket was constructed in such a way that an exploding engine isn’t a catastrophic failure.

According to SpaceX’s president, Glynne Shotwell, the launch itself was “picture perfect.” The Dragon capsule was placed in exactly the right orbit, and will now maneuver into position for docking with the International Space Station on Wednesday.

The mission, CRS-1, is the first of 12 commercial supply missions to the ISS, which SpaceX is carrying out under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. The next 11 launches are expected to occur between 2013 and 2015.

The SpaceX Dragon launch is vital to the ongoing health of the International Space Station. Dragon will carry around 900 kilos of (2,000lbs) of cargo to the ISS, including vital supplies for both the crew and ongoing scientific experiments. More importantly, though, Dragon is capable of returning cargo from the ISS back to Earth — an ability that we have lacked since the retirement of the Space Shuttle. Except for the Space Shuttle and Soyu , other cargo ships are simply jettisoned from the ISS and then burnt up during atmospheric re-entry — and Soyu , with its cosmonaut occupants, doesn’t have space for return cargo.

Dragon is expected to return 905 kilos of cargo, 400kg of which is scientific experiments that have been stored on the ISS for the past year, unable to make the journey back to Earth. A lot of the cargo being returned is actually blood and urine samples, which ISS astronauts have been collecting over the last year, with the hope that we can better understand the effects of low-gravity environments. For a full list of the cargo being delivered and returned by Dragon, hit up the NASA/SpaceX CRS-1 mission manifest [PDF].

NASA administrator Charles Bolden, speaking to the press after after the successful launch, said that CRS-1 is “a historical event in the annals of space flight.” Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, said “We still have a lot of work to do, of course, as we guide Dragon’s approach to the space station. But the launch was an unqualified success.”

Updated: SpaceX has issued an official response. Apparently the engine did not explode — rather, “panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines.”

SpaceX launches ISS resupply spacecraft, despite mid-launch engine explosion