When an unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying cargo to the International Space Station disintegrated over the Florida coast just two minutes after lift-off Sunday, the pieces not only fell on billionaire Elon Musk's aerospace venture image, but they also clouded a few asteroid miners' dreams.

Musk has shaken the global launch business in recent years by showing it can successfully fly rockets at a fraction of the price of other providers. And cheap, reusable rockets are key to making asteroid mining feasible.

However, yesterday’s fiasco was the third major failure for America's commercial space industry in less than a year.

"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank," Musk Tweeted. "That's all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough" analysis

According to William Gerstenmaier, a NASA associate administrator, the botched launch shows the challenges facing engineering and space flight in general.

"We expected … we would lose some vehicles," Gerstenmaier said at the news conference. "I didn't think we'd lose them all in a one-year time frame, but we have."

The explosion also lost many student experiments and a water filtration system. Also on board was a piece of hardware that would be used to help two new crew vehicles dock to the station.

Planetary Resources, the U.S.-based start-up aiming to mine asteroids, lost its first satellite after an Orbital Antares rocket blew up in October only six seconds after take-off. A few days later a Russian Progress 59 spun out of control after reaching orbit. The Orbital failure raised questions about NASA's bold plan to outsource the cargo resupply mission to contractors in the wake of the space shuttle retirement in 2011.

“We are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight. The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles."

SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has also been lobbying for the opportunity to launch the Pentagon's spy satellites and other crucial spacecraft.

• [Editor:Juan]