The Coast Guard now confirms that it found pieces of the Falcon 9 rocket that exploded Sunday off the coast of Central Florida.
As we reported Sunday, the Falcon 9 exploded a few minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Coast Guard said it located the debris field Sunday night.
- SpaceX launch ends in failure, cargo lost
- Falcon 9 rocket explosion likely to impact research
- SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch set for Sunday morning
The debris field was located farther north in Volusia County and it stretched across 150 miles. But there may be some debris still in waters off Brevard County.
To mark the debris, Coast Guard crew dropped flares into the water.
A Coast Guard aircrew dropped numerous flares into the ocean to mark that debris area. This aircrew quickly scrambled and flew from a station in Clearwater to Volusia county on the opposite coast in an HC-130 Hercules aircraft.
So far there have been no reports of debris washing up on shore but the warnings are still in effect.
According to the Brevard County Emergency Management officials, debris is not expected to wash up along the shore for three to five days. If and when debris washes ashore, it's expected to show up in the area north of St. Augustine.
An official investigation is underway for the rocket explosion, and any debris that is found is vital to the investigation, officials said. Although, much of the debris may be impossible to find.
The explosion of the rocket and capsule occurred about 2 minutes, 30 seconds into the flight. Pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic Ocean. More than 5,200 pounds of International Space Station cargo were on board, including the first docking port designed for future commercial crew capsules.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, sent out the following tweet at 4:09 a.m. Monday:
Cause still unknown after several thousand engineering-hours of review. Now parsing data with a hex editor to recover final milliseconds.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2015
If you see debris, call SpaceX's hotline at (866) 392-0035
Sen. Bill Nelson, who was briefed on the rocket mishap by NASA and SpaceX at the Kennedy Space Center on Monday, said the cause of the explosion remains unknown, but added the first stage of the rocket performed well, and the Dragon capsule separated from the second stage.
It also was not immediately known if any of the capsule is salvageable.
Nelson said many people were surprised this happened to SpaceX, a commercial company that has seen quick success through its commercial partnership with NASA to take cargo, and eventually crew to the International Space Station.
"SpaceX has had such phenomenal success so quickly, that folks didn't anticipate, and thus it was all the mor, that is was a surprise that this success had a hiccup," Nelson said.
Nelson added he was not sure if the mishap would delay manned missions to the International Space Station, currently set for 2017.
Here is a video still sequence of the launch failure:
