The Falcon 9 was scheduled to send two payloads into space. One made it to the International Space Station, but the other, a communications satellite prototype didn't make it into orbit, after one of the rocket's nine engines shut down seconds after the launch.

The mission was destined to travel to the International Space Station to deliver cargo, but following what SpaceX dubbed an "overpressure event" after a piece of the rocket called a "strut" failed to handle the amount of pressure it was designed to withstand, the rocket disintegrated minutes after take off.

An explosion ripped through the rocket on its Cape Canaveral launchpad as it was being prepared for a static fire test before a scheduled launch of a communications satellite a couple days later. An investigation revealed that the reason for the failure likely had to do with a malfunction in the tanks that hold cold helium, which sit inside a tank that holds supercooled liquid oxygen.