So, SpaceX has been preparing to launch humans to the International Space Station. This would be the first American launch with crew onboard since 2011 (when the Space Shuttle last flew). At the beginning of March, they launched a test mission that was essentially a "full dress rehearsal" of if they were to launch astronauts, and after the successful completion of this mission, they were set to launch astronauts in September or so.

There was just one more step left. An essential component of crewed space vehicles is a "Launch Escape System". Essentially, if the giant rocket full of explosive fuel has any type of issue, you need to be able to have the little box with people in it get the heck out of there. So they attach thrusters to the main capsule, which can very quickly pull it away from any exploding rocket. You can view SpaceX's "pad abort test" (essentially, testing the capsule's ability to escape a rocket if it explodes while still sitting on the launch pad) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8

So in June, the plan was to do an "In-flight abort test" (so, if the rocket explodes while they're halfway up to space, the capsule can escape from a rocket in midair that's in the process of flying.) The plan was to re-use the capsule that did the dress rehearsal I mentioned earlier.

A week and a half ago, they were doing some preliminary checks on this capsule. They had it out on a concrete pad, and they were commanding it to test out its engines. Then suddenly, the entire capsule just straight-up exploded. Nobody (publicly released at least) knows why. But it raises a ton of questions, and means there is no way they will be flying astronauts into space this year.

This is especially worrying because, if this thing blew up now, then there's a chance that the flaw that caused it could have caused it to blow up 6 weeks ago - you know, when it was docked to the space station. If this had happened while it was up there, it could have killed all the astronauts on the station. Which is a problem. So now they have a huge investigation. The hope is that the flaw somehow relates to something that happened AFTER going up and back down, but we don't know. If it's something in the design and it indeed could have exploded up there, there will be a ton of further analysis needed, to figure out how we got to this point.

So yeah. I'm a space nerd and that's what's been happening lately. Super interested to see what the cause ends up being.