A SpaceX rocket exploded minutes after launching from Florida on an uncrewed mission to deliver supplies to the International Space Station on Sunday. Now, mission controllers are starting the potentially tedious process of finding out what went wrong.

Carrying a Dragon capsule, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated above Florida a little more than two minutes after launching on its ISS mission at 10:21 a.m. ET Sunday. The failure's root cause wasn't immediately clear, but SpaceX thinks a problem occurred in the second stage of the Falcon 9.

Each stage (or segment) of a Falcon 9 has its own engine and fuel, used to boost a payload higher and higher, to its predetermined orbit. The rocket's first stage, which has nine engines on a Falcon 9, falls away after it burns its fuel, at which point the second stage is expected to kick on and boost the payload even higher.

See also: SpaceX rocket fails just after launching uncrewed mission to ISS

There were no reports of injuries as a result of the explosion, according to NASA and SpaceX.

Mission managers are now trying to learn more about the specific issue that caused the Falcon 9's massive malfunction, which is its first in 19 launches.

Data sent back from the Dragon just after the Falcon 9 broke apart may help SpaceX in its investigation, company COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a Sunday news conference.

"There is nothing that stands out as being different for this particular flight that we've done for other flights," Shotwell said. "I don't want to speculate as to what it's going to take to get back to flight because we don't yet know."

Ground controllers are not yet sure what kind of debris they will be able to recover after Sunday's disintegration.

The Dragon was carrying 4,000 pounds of supplies for the ISS when the Falcon 9 broke apart above Florida. It was stocked with food, multiple science experiments and equipment, including a docking adaptor that was meant to help crewed vehicles built by SpaceX and Boeing fly astronauts to the space station by 2017.

This is the third failure of an uncrewed cargo mission to the ISS since October 2014.

Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus space capsule carrying thousands of pounds of supplies for the station was destroyed during an Antares rocket failure last year, while a Russian Progress supply craft failed to reach the ISS after launching earlier this year. The Progress made it to space, but didn't reach the station. Instead, it started to spin out of control, and eventually broke apart over the Pacific Ocean days after launch.

There isn't anything that these failures have in common "other than the fact that it's space and it's difficult to go fly," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator of human exploration and operations, said during Sunday's news conference.

ISS residents — NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko — have enough food and supplies to last them for the next several months, according to the space agency. Meanwhile, Russia is set to launch another Progress resupply vehicle to the space station on Friday, which will extend their supplies. An uncrewed Japanese cargo craft is also expected to launch in August.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that while Sunday marked an unwelcome failure, it will not stop SpaceX and the space agency's spaceflight ambitions: