Catastrophic Vehicle Failure Comes Just As Confidence in System Soared

ANN REALTIME Update, 1152 ET, 06.28.15: Elon Musk has tweeted the following... "There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause... That's all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis."

Original Story: Another day, another regrettable story... though, in this case, there has been no loss of life.

ANN has confirmed that today's attempted launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle as part of the NASA CRS-7 ISS resupply program failed shortly before first stage separation at an altitude estimated at 45 km.

The video shows no apparent instability or non-ballistic behavior, just a symmetrical flare-up and the rapid disintegration of the vehicle. The vehicle stopped transmitting data at 139 seconds into the launch. SpaceX has announced that they will have a News Conference later today, but no earlier than 1230 ET. 

SpaceX' Elon Musk tweeted a short comment shortly after the failure, noting, "Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data."

The current supply situation on board the ISS is not in bad shape... Looking at consumables, The ISS would have to dip into reserves some time in September without any further resupply missions, but two more (Progress M-28M on July 3rd and HTV-5 on August 17th) are scheduled before then. 

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.spacex.com