mark kelly, the astronaut, thank you, very much. mark o'brien. stay with us for all of the breaking news. i'm wolf blitzer in "the situation room," erin burnett "outfront" picks up our coverage. "outfront" tonight, breaking news, a rocket with classified crypto equipment explodes seconds after liftoff just moments ago. the rocket headed for the international space station with classified equipment on board. what went wrong? we'll show that to you and find out what happened with the breaking news. and more breaking news with new security measures, thousands of federal buildings across the united states as isis ramps up calls for terrorist attacks in the homeland. let's go "outfront." the breaking news tonight, a failed nasa rocket launch ended moments ago with a dramatic and

shocked explosion. the launch director saying that it had classified crypto equipment on board. cnn were told there was no loss of life but significant damage on the ground. the launch, an explosion happening over wallops island, virginia. mission control trying to assess what went wrong. launch director saying they must maintain the crash site due to security concerns because of the classified equipment on board. our tom for em begins our coverage tonight. what are you learning? the pictures are stunning. >> it is amazing. this was the first try of the two-stage rocket with a second, more powerful motor than what has been used before. and this is the first time the motor has been debuted here. this entire rocket was run by orbital science. they are under contract with nasa. they have almost a $2 billion contract to deliver pay loads to the space station.

the second stage engine was build by rocket-dine and they have a contract to build the landing system thrusters for the mars 2020 mission . in terms of the crypto equipment, i don't understand and i am trying to get clarity on it. but they keep people back far enough so nobody hurts when this happens. the reason it didn't happen last night because a sailboat was within the roughly 1400 square mile safety zone where they keep people away just in case something goes wrong. but any time you launch any kind of spacecraft like this and you have a new component on it that raises questions about how exactly how everything comes together and whether or not it will work properly. and just for point of reference here, a short while ago, one of our guests on cnn said this is not as easy as it looks. here is something to bare in mind. when a rocket like this takes off, it is burning so much fuel

and it is moving so quickly, and it is changing altitude and temperature and weight so quickly, truly every second it is a different type of aircraft or spacecraft because it is changing so dramatically. it is hard to do this. so one little thing can go wrong and you can have cataclysmic results like you saw here. nobody hurt. but in addition to the supplies being carried in the pay load which is called the signus, there is about 5,000 pounds for scientific experiments going up. for them to reach on board a spacecraft like this, it has gone through a tremendous amount of development and investment and that equipment is now lost and the knowledge that was expected to come from it is also lost. i will guarantee you there are researchers all over right now who can hardly breathe because they are saying, we just lost a tremendous investment in the future of what we are going to

do with all of this. this is really a cataclysmic thing. it doesn't just look like it, it truly is. >> and we were reporting from the launch director from the feed as they were launching that there was classified crypto equipment on board and now they are securing the craft due to what was on board the rocket. i want to bring in pliels o'brien. and bill nye the science guy. and i'll ask each of you. miles, you've had a chance to look at this. and when you see this video, you can see a lot more than the rest of us can see. what can you see that could possibly have gone so cataclysmically wrong. >> you have to remember what we are talking about here. it is a lot of -- a lot of power and a lot of energy unleashed through a lot of plumbing that has to be perfect. and ever so slight a leak will ruin your day. and that is all it takes, is a

slight amount of -- a turbo pump that fails or a pipe that springs a leak, one way or another, it can go from a good day to a bad day. you can go from zero on the ground to 17,000 miles per hour in the course of 8.5 minutes and that is serious acceleration and when you mix the kerosene fuel with an oxidizer and releasing it. it is unclear whether the rocket itself exploded or whether it was some sortd of -- sort of problem detected by computers or the human beings at the consoles that forced them to hit the red button that will destroy it or what we call range safety. >> miles, when you look at this, what do you see, just in terms of the timing, the moment at -- when this happened and how the explosion itself -- you see it shoot up, right. it starts to move higher, and

then you see the explosion in the middle move down? >> and you listen to the flight director, it sowns like they -- sounds like they were expecting it to work fine and then something went kata troughicly wrong. it may be. i think miles is dead on, it might be a piping problem. >> you say nobody pushed the button. >> it could be. but especially on a classified mission, there could be something we don't know about. but it looks to me, investigation will figure this out, but it looks like there was a leak and the amount of fuel that is pushed through this plumbing in a very short amount of time, makes a leak a kata troughic problem. it is not like a fuel leak in your car and you think you smell gas and go to the gas station. the pressures are so high, the fire starts really fast. it is just -- it is just

heart-breaking, you guys. so much investment, so much time, effort and energy and things go wrong. but it does show you the industry is -- mature and nobody got hurt. this catastrophic thing but nobody got hurt. we spent a lot of money in a few moments. >> and miles, we talk about the contract was $2 billion and we'll talk much more about this. there was a significant -- i'm looking at the pay load. a classified crypto technology and we don't know what this was or whether there was a relationship thbetween this and what happen -- between this and what happened but there was classified u.s. investigations material is how it is classified here. miles, i remember where i was when the challenger exploded. it is -- it is a very rare and horrible thing when these things happen. obviously, the miracle here is no one was on board. it was an unmanned expedition,

but how surprised are you that something like this could happen, given from what we understand that they expected this to be a very routine process. >> there is nothing routine about going to space, period. and i covered probably close to 50 shuttle missions in my career, erin, and i was always surprised when they got to orbit safely because they had a million moving parts in there, frankly all from the lowest bit, it is a very difficult thing to get to space and i never forgot that. and knopp of the astronaut -- none of the astronauts who flew on a shuttle or rocket will forget that or tell you it is routine. it is not routine. the engineers, the astronauts make it sound and look routine but it is not. and these sort of accidents are -- you know, it is a big challenge. and the laws of physics are way against us to get to space and these things will happen on occasion. i do want to clear something up. there is nothing on the space station involved in spying or

crypto graphic activity. so i want people to be very clear on that. but the international space station is 16 nations, nasa and the russians taking the lead and there is no spying on anybody. i don't know where this piece of information comes from and what particular piece of equipment they are concerned about on the rocket itself, but let's not get the impression this was a spy mission. >> let me bring in tom forman. it was the launch director who said it had classified crypto equipment on board. tom, what more do you know? >> miles is exactly right there. we have to get clarity on, this but what it could refer to is there are experiments on board for proprietary information and telemetry information and that

could be protected or in a crypto field. it doesn't mean it has anything to do with spying or the cia or any military usage. it might, but it is not likely. this was just a supply mission. >> so no classified crypto equipment so no idea who would be the owner of that. >> exactly. >> let me bring in leroy chow, a former nasa astronaut. when you watch this, you must have many, many emotions. when you see this, what do you think happened? what could have gone wrong? >> well, i agree with everyone who has been speaking here. and it is too early to speculate. probably too early in the mission, just a few seconds off the pad to have abort, probably some kind of mechanical failure, either the fuel lines or a computer or something or engine something like that. the investigation will show it.

now that the re-supply mission has failed, it leaves the crew in a bit of a lurch. nothing immediate. but during my expedition, expedition 10, we had a shortage of food, water and oxygen and we were within a week of running out of water and may have to abort before the supply ship arrived. and the question is there are people staying up all night tonight to figure out what to do about this. >> we will take a brief break. and i will say, according to the log i have here, they have 1,360 pounds of food on the rocket. so that was important for the international space station. we have an eyewitness who saw the explosion happen and they are going to join us right after this break. we'll hit the pause and we'll be back in just a couple moments.

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enjoy the relief. breaking news, an unmanned nasa rocket exploding in a huge fire ball seconds after takeoff from the east coast of the united states. this is off the coast of virginia. you see this rocket goes off. at this point everything looks normal. and then suddenly, as you'll see, everything goes horribly wrong in this launch.

so you can see exactly there, that moment. it is slated to take between 8-10 minutes to get to orbit. and as we talked about it going from zero to 17,500 miles per hour and loaded with 5,000 pounds of cargo headed for the international space station. nasa also said that the rocket had, quote, unquote, classified crypto equipment on board. we can't tell you any more than that at this time. that time there are no reports of loss of liech. i want to bring in an eyewitness reporter for the baltimore sun. i know we just played it, the launch appeared to be normal as we show it again and as you go off the first shot and look higher, things go horribly wrong. what did you see? >> i think the big thing here is this rocket took off from [ inaudible ] which is an area -- you can't very get close to. i watched it from three miles

away across the marsh and everyone -- they brought out their binoculars and cameras and i had my camera out and a couple of hours ahead to kind of stake out an area and i think everything -- you immediately thought everything was fine because you see this big -- big -- the launch and everything just kind of brightened up the sky. and then all of a sudden you see a big fire ball, probably five seconds into the launch. and you knew that something had gone wrong. after that, immediately you saw the plume of smoke come from the launch pad and some -- about probably 100 yard area around the launch pad was all in flames. >> so the launch pad area was all in flames. so you are saying, because it is hard when we are watching this to totally understand. from where you were standing on the ground, it was about -- again, that takeoff looked kind of picture perfect, but you are saying it was about five seconds

from the takeoff to explosion? >> yeah. probably. i had never seen one of these rocket launches before, but it was a situation where you see the boosters and they brighten up the sky and then all of a sudden and you think everything is going right and about five seconds in, you noticed that there is a fire ball. and it lit up the sky. you heard a big boom. usually you hear those booms from what i hear from the other observers who live in this area, but you hear and it lights up the sky. it is a big deal when these go off, because in this resort town of virginia on the mouth of chesapeake bay -- go ahead. >> no, i'm sorry. when you were talking about the boom that sort of happened. how loud was it? to your ear, how loud did that sound? >> oh, it was loud. i mean it was -- you definitely

felt your feet shake a little bit. i don't know how that compares to how these launches are normally, because from what i hear, they are loud. everyone was talking around me about how you could just kind of -- that is a big part of it, how close you are to the launch. and i know this launch had been seen throughout the eastern seaboard, and that is why people come here to do it. i was one of the people who came down and wanted to watch it. >> and i guess the question i have for you, is at what point did you know something had gone wrong. when you first watch one of these as a lay person, you watch it explode and it explodes in a fire ball, right. and then you see sort of this perfect white rocket just kind of emerge out of the plume, right. and that is the moment where it is so magnificent. at what point did you know something went wrong? >> i think when, like around five seconds after the launch. and you notice the rocket wasn't going up into the sky. there was a big fire ball

probably around -- i don't know, 100 to 200 yards above the ground and it was a bright fire ball, the kind of that encompassed the sky. it found toward the ground and there is brush around that area because it is marshy land there and then you saw -- i think that is when you noticed it, when you saw the fire along the ground, along the launch pad and moments later, you hear the fire engines coming across the bridge and into the site. >> and we don't at this point, ed, i should say, we know this was an unmanned rocket and they did this on wallops island and make sure they didn't -- made sure they didn't do it yet when there was a sailboat in the quote, unquote, range, but they say there is significant damage on the ground to property, equipment and vehicles. at this point we don't know if there is loss of life, we don't believe if there is but we don't know. what happened immediately afterwards in terms of the emergency vehicles and where were they coming from? how many were there? >> there were a few.

there is one bridge that goes on to where the launch site is, and immediately you saw the bright red lights from -- coming over the bridge, probably within a matter of seconds, probably about a minute -- probably about a minute or two, you immediately saw that. but i think -- like i said, if you talk about the loss of the structure there, you could see -- you could tell just by the fire and how high the flames were from as far away as i was, which is 3 or 4 miles that there was a massive catastrophe of property and stuff there at the site -- at the launch site. >> ed, stay with us. we are getting new images in. i will show them to the viewers. we have new images. don't go away. i want to bring in charles lieu, and leroy chow, a former nasa

astronaut. charles, you hear what ed was talking about three miles away and one of the things that stood out was that as he watched this and when five seconds in, when the explosion happened, he felt the earth shake. >> yes. that is quite expected. there is a tremendous amount of fuel load. as the previous commentators had been saying. from what i could see from here and my rocket science is -- the expert can be much more expert about it, but it seems that the rocket simply stopped. the thing kind of went up and straight back down again. it wasn't a wild, crazy, for example, spiraling rocket going out of control. so it does seem like something just cut off, either the rockets themselves or the fuel to the rockets stopped and started going elsewhere. but that much fuel, making the ground shake, is a perfectly normal thing to happen. and it is very fortunate for nasa to take the proper precaution and the wallops

island launch site is just over the atlantic ocean and they go over the atlantic so there is no loss of life. it is a sad thing that more than 4800 pounds of scientific equipment and food for the international space station flight crew has been lost. >> and that food, i think we should emphasis to viewers, it takes a long time and a lot to get the expedition together and we don't know what the crypto equipment was. we do know, in terms of food. there were nearly 1400 pounds of food. which is desperately needed by people on the international space station. i think, leroy, as an astronaut, this is something that we should be emphasizing, right? >> oh, absolutely. during my mission and expedition 10, we had a foot shortage, and in fact we came within a week of running out of water and two weeks of running out of food. and of course oxygen was getting low before the resupply shipment

arrived. so that had to arrive or we would have to abandon ship. and now i think the situation is not quite as dire as that. i think they have some margin now but the question remains, you've lost an entire cargo flight and now you have to make it up within a certain amount of time. and so, as i moenentioned befor i'm sure there are nasa folks tonight working all night to figure out what happened to that. >> and let me ask you a question, you could have seen the rocket and that moment when we are watching the explosion, that it could have pulled away and spiralled as opposed to just falling back which is what it seems to be here in this giant fire ball. >> that is right. >> in terms of what could have gone wrong, what would be the difference between those two things? >> if the fuel remained flowing to the engine, and the engines were still operational, but somehow the rocket's overall ability to guide itself or on the path it was planning to go on failed, you can imagine

something almost looking like a fireworks display or a pinwheel and flying and then the spacecraft spirals out of control before it splashes and explodes. during the early 1960s, the early parts of the space program, early catastrophic disasters happened there, with no loss of life. but in this case if it goes straight up and straight back down again, it is more likely that the engine simply stopped working and who knows why that happened. i, of course, can't tell at all despite looking at the footage. >> thank you for explaining that as best as you could. everyone please stay with us. we have new images loading into our system that we are loading. we have new images that we have obtained and we'll get those for you and be right back on the other side of this break. we'll be right back.

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we'll show you the launch in slow motion. you can see the motion of ignition and what appears to be a successful takeoff and in just about five seconds, you see it go out of the frame and then you look up and then -- there you see that huge explosion as something goes so horribly wrong, halts the rocket. eyewitnesses were just telling us a moment ago, ed was there and he said he literally felt the ground beneath him shake as it exploded. the nasa was a contract rocket and dropped straight back to the ground. it didn't spiral, it just fell back and fell straight it. was loaded with about 5,000 pounds of cargo and equipment. one nasa transmission prior to the launch mentioned there was classified crypto equipment on board. all of that, along with 1400 pounds of food, which was going up to the crew that is currently on the international space station, that needs that food. we just got new video shot by

someone watching the launch. this is the audio of the people around them and i want to play it for you. >> look at that. [ explosion sounds ] >> you can literally see the light change. i want to bring tom forman in. before you start with your latest, i wanted to play again that footage we just got from people who were right there on the ground. we're playing the slow-mo now and i'll play it again. because you literally see the entire light along the horizon change in this video filmed by someone who was just nearby. >> yeah, what you are seeing here, erin, is roughly three quarter of a million pounds of thrust being unleashed, because this thing blows apart here. and when you see that, of course you're going to get a big shock

wave or a big explosion coming out, and that is why they keep people so far away. ly s-- i will say this, erin, a we watch the slow motion. >> yes. and we'll watch that now. this is a slow motion of the takeoff. go ahead, tom. >> almost the bottom two thirds of this rocket are the first stage, the first stage is a liquid-fueled stage, it uses liquid oxygen and basically rocket propellant which is a derivative of kerosene. that is not the term for it but that is what is being used here. liquid oxygen has to be poured into it because it is burning so fast and powerful you can't rely on oxygen in the air. and when it is blowing up, it is in the bottom two thirds and that is where the first stage is pushing this skyward and was going to push it for about four minutes before the second stage would kick in. so that is a tremendous amount of force just being released there when there is so sort of

cataclysmic failure in the first stage. >> and as you talk about the stages, i'm reading from what we have from the mission over view from the company orbital which had a $2 billion contract. said it would take 10 minutes from takeoff until this rocket was in orbit. as miles o'brien was saying, that is about 8-10 minutes going from zero to 17,500 miles an hour and when you talk about this happening a few seconds in, is there any sense from your understanding how fast it was going at that time? >> what is happening right now, it is not that it is going fast, it is exerting a tremendous amount of energy to break free of gravity. one of the reasons that it is going 16,000, 17,000 miles an hour when it reaches the height is because it has moved out of the atmosphere. if you were simply falling through space, you might be going 700, 800, 900 miles an hour because there is nothing to hold you back. but here, when you are fighting gravity, you are fighting the

inertia of the rocket not moving and fighting atmosphere, it is just a tremendous amount of force, not speed yet. speed will come. but it starts with the enormous amount of force. >> which i guess in the physics is important distinction, you talking about force and the fuel and the power and the thrust as opposed to the speed at the initial few seconds in. let me bring in mark kelly. captain kelly knows more about this than anyone out there. when you see this, mark, what do you see? from the video we are showing but also the video that someone fillped from on -- filmed from on the ground where people were watching, at the moment of explosion, you see the whole sky turn from light to dark. >> well, yeah. it is a lot of fuel and kerosene and a big explosion. as tom said, it takes a lot of propellant to get a spacecraft of that size moving 25 times the speed of sound. so when it fails, it is usually

pretty catastrophic. the one thing that concerns me, looking at the video, where did it fall? it obviously fell within the center and did it do damage to the launch pad? that is a significant issue. we know the rocket failed. but orbital sciences and space x is there an ability to resupply the space station and this won't get there but how does that impact future orbital sciences flights. it seems like it could have a significant impact to operations on board the international space station. >> so you are saying it could have a significant impact -- let me ask you because you know -- because you've been here, when we talk about the fact that -- let me pull these numbers up again. almost 1400 pounds of food were going up there and that is obviously -- how soon until they can resupply? how long until something else can go up? >> well, what will happen is -- they have to do an

investigation, and orbital won't want to launch until they figure out what happened with this rocket. that rocket uses an rd-180 engine which is a russian engine which is historically reliable. so they have to do an investigation. the impact on the space station, you can mitigate that by moving on the next space x launch, take some stuff off and put more food on, but what you are taking off might be scientific pay loads. so there will be -- there is going to have to be some debate and managing of the uplift capability. but we think about these things far in advance and just losing this rocket today won't have an impact tomorrow, but over time that pay load not getting there certainly will. >> and mark kelly, from the pay load, and the launch commander was making comments on the nasa line feed that we have. and they said the cygnus

spacecraft does have classified crypto equipment on the spacecraft. do you have any sense of what that might mean. >> i don't know exactly what it is. we do not use the international space station for military purposes. there is no intelligence collecting from the space station. so what i imagine that might be, every spacecraft has a launch that has a destruct system and the ground can communicate with the spacecraft to command it to explode. if it was going to go into a populated area or maybe even in this space, they had a man terminate the flight after a major anomaly. well that signal is -- it is done in a way through crypto graphic resources on board the spacecraft. because you wouldn't want somebody -- some hacker on the ground to be able to blow up a rocket. so there is crypto graphic equipment on board with the range safety system for sure.

>> all right. which is -- and i'm glad you are providing this context and color because we didn't have this before. one other thing you said i wanted to follow up with, commander, when you were talking about the russian engine, can you give us more detail. tell me if i heard you wrong, but what i thought i heard you wrong, if was one -- it was one of the mow reliable sophisticated engines there is. >> i said it was -- it wasn't sophisticated. t it is incredibly reliable. we've been using it. not only orbital used it, but lockheed martin uses it and there have been thousands of 180s to launch into space and it is a reliable engine. and it is a geopolitical issue we have with the russian government with access to the engines because we use them in our rockets. if they made the decision not to allow us to use that engine to

us any more, not to sell it to us, it puts us in a bad spot. >> i'm sure that is something people watching this was not aware of. thank you very much, for all of the perspective you've brought to us. we'll be back with more continuing coverage of this breaking news tonight. ] with life insurance, we're not just insuring our lives... we're helping protect his. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. transamerica. transform tomorrow.

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major breaking news tonight, a nasa rocket has exploded just six seconds after liftoff from the east coast of the united states, off of virginia. we have new video of the explosion taken by an eyewitness. i want to play it for you. >> it is incredible when you see that from that angle, how it

takes over the entire sky after you think you've seen the explosion, when you actually see then that secondary explosion. every angle seems to yield a very different picture on exactly -- i mean, that right there. this explosion happened at 6:22 eastern standard time. so that is about an hour and a 20 minutes ago. i want to show you the launch in slow motion as we have it now. this is the official nasa television as the rocket went off. everything appears to be picture perfect. it leaves that screen there and then in slow motion we'll show you as you look up into the next frame, the rocket continues to be fine but then right about here you see that explosion and then the rocket fell back. now we've had various experts on the show, no one is really sure at this point whether it was perhaps the engine just stopped working, whether perhaps something catastrophic happened and they had to hit a button and abort, it is unclear what might have happened but this explosion almost dropped the rocket straight back to the ground.

it didn't spiral, it fell back to the ground. tom forman is covering this story for us and you were talking about the fact this was a $2 billion contract here. we know on board there was quote, unquote, classified crypto equipment. that is one of the things we know. and we know the explosion as you see in that shot, was so wide that the ground was shaking under eyewitness' feet. but the scale of the catastrophe. this is a big catastrophe. >> it is a big deal. for orbital sciences, they are contract is $1.8 billion and that was for eight different supply missions to the iss. this was the third of them. so it is a big deal to orbital sciences and rocket dine, which makes one of the engines on board and also making engines for a 2020 mars mission. this is all part of the balancing act being done now between nasa and the privateization of the different services here. so big questions here. and yes, the experiments on board here, this is important

stuff to people out there, erin. some of this would look at blood flow from the brain to the heart in zero gravity, that was one of the things being experimented. another would look at the behavior of meteors as they head into our atmosphere. so it represents a tremendous amount of work and investment to get to this point. and as commander kelly pointed out a short while ago, the real question here is the launch pad. what kind of shape it was in after this happened and whether it is taken out of commission for some period of time. because the next launch from this country that could go to the iss with supplies is by space x, another private form out of los angeles. it is the work of elan musk, the man who created the tesla car, and that will launch no sooner than december and it could take equipment and supplies and experiments up to the station. that will go from cape canaveral, not from up here.

but if this launch facility is taken out of commission for a period of time, it does make a big difference because they are relying a lot more on the russians, the europeans, anybody you can to get supplies back and forth, erin. >> tom, thank you very much. as we said, a private company leading this and will be leading the next one as well, which no doubt will become part of the conversation about what went so wrong. and join joining me now is lay musk grave and commander lay ton. and as we are looking at the newest footage of the explosion and you see the explosion from this angle and then you see it again and after it is over, it takes over the entire screen, giving people a sense of -- of 750 million pounds of fuel. this is incredible. what do you think could have gone wrong? >> i think it is catastrophic

failure, and that is either the rockets or the turbo thrust or the tank. and first of all, i do ride in rockets and i could have been on that thing. and it is scary to see it happen. but then after it goes down, you start to analyze things as to what is going on here. and so it is a first-stage failure. >> and colonel, let me ask you in terms of the investigation here, what happens. they are saying now they are going to be the launch director said from nasa that they will maintain the area around the debris for an investigative manner, but also due to the security concerns of the equipment involved. what happens now? >> well, basically, erin, they are going to secure the area by making sure nobody gets into it. they're also going to take a look and make sure that anything that might be part of the cause of the accident is revealed.

so they will do a thorough check and in essence go through everything, any piece of debris they can find. and they will look at it for any telltale signs that anything is wrong. they're going to look at the possibility of sabotage, although i don't think that is the case. they will look at mechanical failures, was it a system failure, or something else? those are the kinds of things they will look at. and it will take a while. >> and how significant is this for the space program, for nasa, for the private companies leading this? >> it is exceedingly significant and massively disappointing. it is a loss, an rp-1 kerosene engine. we have been doing them for years and should be able to make them as reliable as commercial

airlines are. it is a very simple engine and we should be able to make reliable systems as easily as others. it is a rocket, here you have a private commercial company that is buying russian engines. they are supposed to propel us into the future. we are buying modified russian engines. the first stage itself is built in ukraine. now, you know, we have the best rocketeers, erin, that the world has ever known. the saturn rocket, never, ever -- i'm sorry, but i'm a saturn person. we never had a catastrophic failure. we know how to do rockets. but between now and 2020 it is estimated that 50% of the rockets in space will be

russian. >> it is incredible. from this conversation, adding something completely new to this incident that we see on screen. next, breaking news we've just learned at this hour. suspicious activity detected on the white house computer system, obviously, this is a significant story breaking news. we'll be right back at the white house next. and stay awake during the day. this is called non-24, a circadian rhythm disorder that affects up to 70 percent of people who are totally blind. talk to your doctor about your symptoms and learn more by calling 844-824-2424. or visit your24info.com. don't let non-24 get in the way of your pursuit of happiness.

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breaking news, the white house has detected suspicious cyber activity on its own computer network. white house officials tonight scrambling to find out what is going on. jim acosta is there. jim, this is obviously something very concerning and pretty scary for the white house. >> absolutely, erin, we should point out that the white house is not calling this a hacking. but in recent days they were picking up on threats to the computer network here at the white house, and in assessing the threats they're picking up what they call an activity of concern on the unclassified network that serves the executive office of the president. in doing that, erin, what they had to do is take the computer networks down here for a while at the white house. so some executives couldn't use their computer for a while while

the investigation was under way. we should point out the investigation is ongoing. they have not been able to determine who was responsible, and when asked, just wouldn't say. and as for a time frame we should point out this may have happened at recently as friday. and there were employees saying that their computer was down. but definitely something very interesting and something that doesn't happen very often. >> it was something people actually noticed. perhaps it is even more significant. jim, thank you very much. we'll take a break, anderson will be on the other side. savor! red lobster's endless shrimp ends soon! the year's largest variety. like new spicy siriacha shrimp, or parmesan shrimp scampi. as much as you like, any way you like. but it won't last long, so hurry in today. and sea food differently.

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good evening, thank you for joining us, we have breaking news tonight. a long awaited nasa launch, ending just like this within seconds. >> engines at 108%.