With the explosion, both of the contractors NASA relies on to get critical food and supplies to the space station have now had explosions within eight months of each other.

With the retirement of the space shuttle, NASA lost its ability to fly astronauts form U.S. soil, and has been paying the Russians more than $70 million a seat to fly American astronauts to the station. But NASA hopes to use contractors to end that dependence, and last year awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing to develop a capsules that can carry astronauts to the space station.