[gold stinger]

News is still in development. Live camera feed of the aftermath is up on the main NASA website.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

The rocket in question that blew up was Cygnus CRS Orb-3. Info being collected & updated on wikipedia at an alarming rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_CRS_Orb-3

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Cygnus CRS Orb-3, also known as Orbital Sciences CRS Flight 3 or Orbital 3 (Orb-3), was the fourth planned flight of the Orbital Sciences' Cygnus automated cargo spacecraft, would have been its fourth flight to the International Space Station and was the fifth launch of the company's Antares launch vehicle. However, the launch was unsuccessful, with the Antares rocket suffering a failure and crashing back to the launch pad.

The mission was scheduled to launch on October 27, 2014, at 22:45 UTC, with rendezvous and berthing with the ISS early in the morning on November 2. The launch was scrubbed due to safety concerns of a boat entering the zone too close to the launch. A 24 hour delay was put in place, with the next launch opportunity scheduled for 22:22:38 UTC on October 28, 2014. This was the first night-time launch for both the Antares launcher and Cygnus spacecraft.

The Antares rocket carrying the Orb-3 Cygnus launched as scheduled on October 28, 2014, but suffered a catastrophic failure seconds after launch, falling back onto Pad 0A and exploding.

Orb-3 carried a variety of NASA-manifested payloads, some determined fairly late in the days before the launch. In addition, the Arkyd-3 satellite would have been transported to the ISS on this flight.

edit: video of the explosion as it happened has been uploaded to youtube.