A NASA spacecraft exploded 6 seconds after liftoff, on Tuesday night, in Virginia USA.

The vessel was unmanned and none of the support crew was in danger, according to a NASA official who gave an interview shortly after the accident.

The reasons behind the failure are yet unknown. For now, manufacturing company Orbital Sciences states that the failure was caused due to “vehicle anomalies”.

The third Antares rocket program was scheduled to transport 2,267 kg of supplies and experimental equipment to the International Space Station.

In shots and videos published after the fact, the vehicle appears to lift off and, only a few seconds later, exploding, resulting in a backwards stall and crashing into the ground in an even greater explosion.

The liftoff took off at 18:22 local time. Shortly after the accident, the head of the mission issued a directive to “isolate the facilities and collect all the data”.