NASA was forced to remotely detonate an experimental rocket made by its long-time partner Alliant Techsystems (ATK). The ALV-X1 suborbital rocket was carrying two NASA hypersonic flight experiments, and had to be blown up less than a minute after launch because it went astray.

The high-tech rocket was launched from the U.S. space agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern shore and most of the debris fell into the Atlantic Ocean. NASA warned that people spotting rocket debris should by no means touch it and should instead call the Wallops Emergency Operations center at 757-824-1300 and report the finding.

The 17-meter tall Alliant Techsystems ALV-X1 suborbital rocket was at its maiden flight, and lifted off Aug. 22 at 5:10 a.m. Eastern time, carrying NASA's Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition and the Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment payloads. They were lost in the blast, but NASA said it was a calculated risk to send them up in a rocket's first flight. The spacecraft was between 11,000 and 12,000 feet high when it exploded and the accident cost NASA around $17 million, the price of the two hypersonic flight research satellites and flight preparations.

NASA wanted to test three suborbital re-entry ideas. The largest model was a blunt ended cylinder attached to a slightly wider slotted compression ring which should have ensured that the future re-entry capsule goes down nose first at all times.

The other experiment, NASA's Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition, dubbed HyBolt, was to test a shape at Mach 8, eight times the speed of sound, and faster. The HyBolt was to release the SOAREX experiments as they all fell back towards the Atlantic Ocean.