A barge ferrying two Atlas 5 rockets to their Florida launch site crashed into a Kentucky bridge late Thursday (Jan. 26), but the rockets appear to be undamaged, officials say.
The 312-foot (95-meter) cargo ship Delta Mariner smashed into a bridge over the Tennessee River in southwest Kentucky at 9:15 p.m. EST Thursday (0215 GMT Friday), causing a portion of the span to collapse. Though several cars were crossing the bridge at the time, the accident caused no injuries.
The Delta Mariner was carrying two Atlas 5 rockets from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) factory in Decatur, Ala., to Cape Canaveral, Fla., said Sam Sacco, spokesman for Foss Marine, the company that owns and operates the boat.
"There's no damage to the cargo," Sacco told SPACE.com. "Based on what we know right now, there's no real damage to the vessel itself, either."
ULA officials confirmed that the launch vehicles appear to have survived intact. [The World's Tallest Rockets]
"Initial inspections have shown that the flight hardware being transported was not damaged," officials said in a statement today. "The Coast Guard is conducting an investigation."
Sacco said he wasn't sure when the two rockets are due to lift off from Cape Canaveral. In its statement, ULA referenced an "upcoming" launch, without providing specifics.
According to the ULA's launch schedule, an Atlas 5 rocket is scheduled to blast off from the Cape on Feb. 16, carrying a tactical satellite for the United States Navy. Another one is slated to lift off on April 27 with a new military communications satellite on board.
The Delta Mariner, which was commissioned in 2002, transports flight hardware from ULA's Decatur factory to Cape Canaveral and another launch site, California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. It's capable of carrying up to three common booster cores, which are each as long as a 737 jet's fuselage.
The ship can ply both rivers and the open ocean, and it can navigate waterways as shallow as 9 feet (3 m), according to ULA officials. The trip to Cape Canaveral covers about 2,100 miles (3,380 kilometers) and takes eight to 10 days.
Sacco said the cause of the accident ? which apparently did not result in any fuel spills or other obvious environmental problems ? remains a mystery for now.
"The company's been doing it for over 10 years. Exactly why this happened, I can't tell you," he said. "The Coast Guard will lead an investigation into the cause, and that will be the definitive explanation as to what happened."
The Atlas 5 rocket is an expendable booster that first launched in 2002. Since then, it has logged about two dozen liftoffs, with 100 percent mission success, according to ULA officials. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover blasted off atop an Atlas 5 this past November.
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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