ABC News :
An explosion erupted during a SpaceX fueling operation at its launch site in Florida around 9:07 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday morning, company officials and local authorities said.
SpaceX was in the process of conducting a fueling test on Launch Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral when the incident occurred, an engineer at Kennedy Space Center told ABC News.
The explosion happened “in preparation for today’s static fire,” which resulted in “the loss of the vehicle and its payload,” SpaceX said in a statement.
The explosion was felt around the facility and a mushroom cloud could be seen over the launch site, the engineer told ABC News.
There were no injuries as a result of the explosion, the Brevard County Emergency Management Office told ABC News. The office tweeted that “there is NO threat to general public from catastrophic abort during static test fire at SpaceX launch pad at [Cape Canaveral Air Force Station] on Thursday morning.”
Brian Purtell, a spokesman for the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing, which controls Cape Canaveral’s space operations, said that personnel were being evacuated from the facility.
“Once we determine everybody is out of there, then we can go in when it’s safe to kind of determine what happened,” Purtell said, noting that SpaceX had a scheduled launch for early Saturday morning.
