The spectacular June 28 failure of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket apparently was triggered by a support strut inside the booster's second stage liquid oxygen tank that suddenly broke free, releasing a ...

Just after T+2 minutes, the NASA announcer says "Everything coming back shows the vehicle on course, on track.” The Falcon 9 then appears to explode. Credit: NASA TV WASHINGTON — A strut in an upper ...

After weeks of investigating the June 28 Falcon 9 failure and scrutinizing data collected from over 3,000 telemetry channels, video channels, and debris analysis, SpaceX thinks it knows what caused ...

On June 28, a SpaceX rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft to the space station exploded shortly after launch. The cause, Elon Musk told reporters today, was likely a faulty strut holding a Helium ...

Kind of hard to believe a mechanical failure occurred with such low loading. I wonder what material the strut is made from. A welded metal? Composites? It is a rocket after all, so it might be using ...