Originally posted on Quartz: An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket bringing supplies and scientific cargo the International Space Station came apart just minutes after launch today. The cause of the failure, which appeared to come as the rockets’ two stages were about to separate, is still unknown. The company says it is assembling a team to investigate and NASA expects to hold a press conference at 12:50 pm EST, and we will update this post with more information. There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/615185076813459456!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); NASA reported that it was a “non-nominal” flight, and that the rocket had broke up over the range at 2 minutes and 19 seconds into the flight, at an altitude of about 34 kilometers. The rocket’s Dragon space capsule carried 4 tons of food, fuel and science experiments, as was slated to return 1,400 lbs of cargo… View original 483 more words