NASA announced that the launch controllers had destroyed the ATK ALV X-1 suborbital rocket, because it failed to follow its planned path.

ATK ALV X-1 suborbital rocket, carrying two NASA hypersonic experiments, was launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Friday morning at 5:12 a.m.

Shortly after launch, the rocket began to fly away from the planned trajectory. The safety officer determined that it was exceeding the planned flight limits for safety to the public and terminated the flight about 27 seconds after launch. It was between 11,000 and 12,000 feet high when it exploded. The mishap is under investigation.

"I would be surprised if we don't know what happened fairly quickly," said Kent Rominger, vice president of advanced programs for the company's launch systems, as quoted by the Associated Press. He also said they regard this incident as "a very big disappointment but not a setback."

The rocket was carrying the NASA HyBolt - Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition - experiment and the SOAREX sub-orbital re-entry experimental package.

The mission of the HyBoLT payload, located on the nose of the launch vehicle, was to obtain unique high-speed flight data for fundamental boundary layer transition flow physics.

The Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment was designed to evaluate a possible shape for a space capsule that could travel to Mars and gather data on atmospheric conditions encountered by the re-entering probes, NASA said.

Initially, the 55-foot tall ALV-X1 was supposed to fly about 1,000 miles downrange, to a point southeast of Wallops, where it should have fallen, together with the experiments, into the Atlantic Ocean.

Most debris from the rocket is thought to have fallen in the Atlantic Ocean. However, there are conflicting reports of debris being sighted on land. This debris could be hazardous.

Alliant Techsystems, also known as ATK, of Salt Lake City, is conducting the investigation on the rocket malfunction, together with NASA.