Science

While the federal government works to contain Ebola in the U.S., states are taking matters into their own hands—and butting heads with the White House and the CDC in the process.

The attempt to contain the spread of Ebola in the United States is becoming political, with governors imposing varying, stringent, and sometimes unclear quarantine rules that are hard to enforce across state lines.

President Barack Obama spoke out against these policies Wednesday, saying, “We don’t want to discourage our health care workers from going to the front lines. They are doing God’s work over there, and they are doing it to keep us safe.”

Here’s your brief on the science and politics of Ebola.

The company whose rocket exploded in a massive fireball about 200 feet in the air Tuesday is taking a beating on the stock market. Shares for Orbital Sciences are down 15% in early morning trading after the company’s unmanned spacecraft, the Antares, malfunctioned just moments into its attempted journey to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Orbital stock was trading at about $25.50 around noon.

As TIME’s Jeff Kluger points out, the failed launch could be devastating for Orbital, which has been launching spacecraft for decades. The company is competing fiercely with the likes of Elon Musk’s upstart SpaceX to win NASA contracts to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Orbital is seeking to extend its contract, and this accident won’t help matters.

(ATLANTIC, Va.) — The owners of a commercial supply ship that exploded moments after liftoff promised to find the cause of the failed delivery mission to the International Space Station and warned residents to not touch any debris they might stumble across from the craft, which was carrying hazardous materials.

Crews planned to hit the ground at daybreak Wednesday to search for pieces of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo module, which blew up Tuesday night just moments after lifting off from NASA’s launch complex at Wallops Island, Virginia, said Bill Wrobel, director of the facility.

The cargo ship was carrying 5,000 pounds of experiments and equipment for NASA, as well as prepackaged meals and freeze-dried Maryland crabcakes for a Baltimore-born astronaut who’s been in orbit for five months. All of the lost materials will be replaced and flown to the 260-mile-high space station, NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini said. He said astronauts at the station currently have enough supplies to last until spring.

The accident could draw scrutiny to the space agency’s growing reliance on private U.S. companies in the post-shuttle era. NASA is paying billions of dollars to Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and the California-based SpaceX company to make station deliveries, and it’s counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start flying U.S. astronauts to the orbiting lab as early as 2017. It was the fourth Cygnus bound for the orbiting lab; the first flew just over a year ago. SpaceX is scheduled to launch another Dragon supply ship from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in December.

Until Tuesday, all of the supply missions by Orbital Sciences and SpaceX had been near-flawless.

President Barack Obama has long championed this commercial space effort. He was in Wisconsin for a campaign rally and was kept informed.

Orbital Sciences’ executive vice president Frank Culbertson said the company carried insurance on the mission, which he valued at more than $200 million, not counting repair costs. The explosion hit Orbital Science’s stock, which fell more than 15 percent in after-hours trading.

By coincidence, the Russian Space Agency was proceeding with its own supply run Wednesday, planned well before the U.S. mishap.

John Logdson, former space policy director at George Washington University, said the explosion was unlikely to be a major setback to NASA’s commercial space plans. But he noted it could derail Orbital Sciences for a while given the company has just one launch pad and the accident occurred right above it.

At a news conference Tuesday night, Culbertson and others said everyone at the launch site had been accounted for and the damage appeared to be limited to the facilities.

He noted that the cargo module was carrying hazardous materials and warned residents to avoid any contact with debris.

“Certainly don’t go souvenir hunting along the beach,” he said.

Things began to go wrong 10 to 12 seconds into the flight and it was all over in 20 seconds when what was left of the rocket came crashing down, Culbertson said. He said he believes the range-safety staff sent a destruct signal before it hit the ground, but was not certain at this point.

This was the second launch attempt for the mission. Monday evening’s try was thwarted by a stray sailboat in the rocket’s danger zone. The restrictions are in case of just such an accident that occurred Tuesday.

Culbertson said the top priority will be repairing the launch pad “as quickly and safely as possible.”

“We will not fly until we understand the root cause,” he said, adding that it was too early to guess how long it might take to make the rocket repairs and fix the launch pad. It will take a few weeks, alone, to assess the damage and extent of potential repairs.

Culbertson also stressed that it was too soon to know whether the Russian-built engines, modified for the Antares and extensively tested, were to blame.

“We will understand what happened — hopefully soon — and we’ll get things back on track,” Culbertson assured his devastated team. “We’ve all seen this happen in our business before, and we’ve all seen the teams recover from this, and we will do the same.”

The Wallops facility is small compared to NASA’s major centers like those in Florida, Texas and California, but vaulted into the public spotlight in September 2013 with a NASA moonshot and the first Cygnus launch to the space station.

Michelle Murphy, an innkeeper at the Garden and Sea Inn, New Church, Virginia, where launches are visible across a bay about 16 miles away, saw the explosion.

“It was scary. Everything rattled,” she said. “There were two explosions. The first one we were ready for. The second one we weren’t. It shook the inn, like an earthquake. It was extremely intense.”

Among the instruments that were lost from the cargo module: a meteor tracker and 32 mini research satellites, along with numerous experiments compiled by schoolchildren.

The two Americans, three Russians and one German on the orbiting space station were watching a live video feed from Mission Control and saw the whole thing unfold, Suffredini said.

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Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida. AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington and Associated Press Writer Alex Sanz in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Read next: NASA’s Antares Explosion: What it Means

NASA’s unmanned Antares rocket exploded unexpectedly Tuesday seconds after it took off in an attempt to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).

A fireball filled the night sky after the explosion, which destroyed the rocket supplied by Orbital Sciences Corp., at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

NASA officials said on the broadcast of the launch that no personnel appear to be in danger, and the damage to the facility appears to be limited after the burning rocket crashed to the ground. The agency will begin an investigation into the rocket’s failure that includes officials from NASA, Antares’ developer Orbital Sciences Corporation and launch site Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops, Va.

The Antares rocket had been scheduled to launch on Monday to deliver over 5,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS, but was postponed because a boat was too close to the launch area.

NASA had awarded to Orbital Sciences in 2008 a contract for the rocket company to demonstrate successful cargo delivery to the ISS. The explosion was the rocket’s first unsuccessful launch out of its five launches to date.